The Royal Family

| 529 |

It was just before ten o’clock when Tyler got into Dan Smooth’s car. The keychain with the pink plastic heart on it hung between his fingers. He plucked the silver-colored key from its trembling amidst copper keys large and small (more copper-mass here than the Queen’s magic charm), guided it into the angled ignition slit, slowly began turning it until the seatbelt alarm sounded and the windshield wipers began their eager idiotic arcs, rotated it farther until the motor sang, turned off the windshield wipers, clicked his lap belt buckle into the receptacle by his hip, which silenced the alarm, idled the motor for another ten seconds of conscientiousness, then shifted into reverse and backed out of Dan Smooth’s driveway far more slowly than he could have walked. Q Street lay trafficless. He stopped, shifted into drive, alone inside this latest unconscious partner, and headed northwest through midtown. The cassette in Dan Smooth’s tape deck clicked like a shy child clearing its throat, reached its silent limit, and passed successfully through the ritual of reversal. Then a Bulgarian women’s choir began to sing sweet dirges. Half-listening, Tyler found himself already halfway across the trestle bridge, which was reflected in the river as it would have been in the fingerprinted mirror of an old Tenderloin pay phone whose metal-scaled cord had been wrenched out and twisted into an infinity sign: almost a hundred miles from the Tenderloin, he’d lost himself, found himself, lost himself, found himself now passing the sign which neither encouraged nor discouraged him from entering Yolo County. — Don’t you forget old Dan Smooth, the very same had said to him once, and he wouldn’t, not ever, although remembering was as lonely as Ocean Beach at night. — Connie, check that pink case note, Dr. Jasper had said. Can you read it to me? — Two glasses of liquid were found by deceased near his feet, replied dutiful Connie, pulling off the sheet. — Dan Smooth’s eyes were open, dark and fixed, not unlike the glass spheres in a trophy deer’s head. No more sly sidewise glances from him! Smooth gazed straight up at the ceiling, or maybe at heaven, where he doubtless would have charmed all the prepubescent angels. — Dr. Jasper stepped on the pedal of the dictaphone, picked up his scapel, and said to the world: The head is symmetrical and shows no trauma period. — Tyler, grimacing, stood with his hands folded behind his back. He hadn’t tied the green scrub gown on tightly enough.

Why are you here, exactly? said Connie.

I ask myself that every day, said Tyler. I hope I figure it out before they bring me to Dr. Jasper here.

Well, you only have a one in four chance of ending up in this room, said Connie. More than six thousand deaths every year get signed off elsewhere in the county.

I’m not from this county anyway, said Tyler. I mean, I was, but not now.

Could you step to one side, please? asked Connie.

Where are you from? said Tyler.

Moldavia, said Connie.

Oh, how is it over there?

Fine, said Connie.

And how is it over here?

All right.

Well, I guess we’ve covered all the bases, said Tyler. If it’s all right over here, then why don’t you want me to end up here?

I really don’t care, to be honest, Connie said. You can step back closer now if you want.

Nicely done, he said.

Sorry it smells in here, said Connie. The next one over there is a little bit decomposed.

Something to look forward to. Are you near the Black Sea?

Sort of.

Echoing Connie’s first unanswerable question, Dr. Jasper slashed Dan Smooth open from each shoulder to the chest, and then down to the base of the belly, in an immense, bloodless letter Y. The skin and fat was a good finger’s breadth thick. Steadily Dr. Jasper peeled and skinned away that human hide, announcing to his invisible audience: The exterior genitalia is male comma circumcised period. There is a one-and-one-fourth- by three-and-five-eighths-inch scar.

They had brought Irene to this room which smelled like the Hotel Liverpool, which is to say like garbage, she not falling into the ranks of the six thousand who’d died unsuspicious deaths. Perhaps she’d lain naked and cut open on this very table: one chance in six. But the fat beneath Irene’s skin and inside her breasts would have been yellowish — white, most likely, not bright orange as was Dan Smooth’s. (And the Queen, had they brought her here, too, or was she still alive somewhere?) Inner color was no mystery. It all depended on blood content, Dr. Jasper would later explain.

Then the knife went grating across the rib cage, and Connie was pressing the whirling blade of a stainless steel saw across the top of Dan Smooth’s head, her bloody gloves slowly whitening with bone dust.

The river now behind him, the new county a tabula rasa of free opportunity, he bore right, the white round bulk of a storage tank glowing in the night like Dan Smooth’s skull. Another right, and he was parking in the lot above the launching slip. Quietly he walked down to the water, listening to the crickets. His father had courted his mother here. On the other shore, an ugly red light hung in the sky, brighter and steadier than any star — the eye of some radio tower, he supposed. He didn’t remember it, although doubtless it had unwinkingly overseen every river night for years. The pale cube of a houseboat was not quite as still as that, and its moonlit reflection even less so, continually decaying and renewing itself. The night was beautiful and smelled of water.

An impure mixture of emotions polluted his chest. He admitted that he had always turned away from Smooth, in death as in life, that he had been disgusted by the man and in equal measure afraid of him, that his omnivorous needs had nonetheless most cheerfully taken everything which Smooth, who had done him only but good, had ever offered him; in sum, that Smooth’s death afforded him not only a car, but relief. Yet, having confessed (if only to the river and to himself) his selfishness, which had gone beyond exploitation almost to cruelty, he now with unfocused surprise discovered within himself a sincere grief, too, which stank within his soul like one of Dr. Jasper’s partially decayed patients — no doubt because it was tainted with the greenish bile of guilt. First his life had been full of Irene; then briefly the false Irene had accomodated his despair, afterwards, of course, the Queen had had him. He felt that only now was he coming to possess himself. — But how had he done wrong? — By worshiping only his own desires, came the answer. — But that was one reason why I loved them all, he protested, to help them! — a fact undeniably true — but what had he ever done for Smooth, who’d wanted to be his friend? From the prostitutes he’d taken only the worst maxims, the ways of giving not himself, but his mere shell, like that gorgeous scarlet and yellow mantle of flesh which Dr. Jasper had undone with his scapel and thrown open across Smooth’s shoulders. Hadn’t the ancient Athenians, the rich ones, gotten interred in cloaks of scarlet? That came back to him, maybe from Plutarch… John would know for sure. It had been so long since Tyler had done anything worthwhile, even reading, which was not worthwhile in and of itself but could dispose one to worthwhile acts. And for a moment, but only a moment, he felt that he had awakened from a long and flabby sleep. But he didn’t want to wake up anymore. — My days are late and wasted, he thought to himself. Better to float back into the river-night. The Queen had been awake; perhaps Smooth had been, too, between or behind repulsive dreams. (The Queen done offed him, said a Polk Street runaway, a scrawny little blond boy, in unshakeable and malicious ignorance.) Had Irene killed herself out of knowledge or out of dreamy fear of knowledge? Tyler, however, wanted to live life selfish and unaware like everyone else he knew — but none of his desires and pretensions were licit. After all, this had been precisely the situation of Dan Smooth.

I must remember, he said to himself distractedly, that he helped me, never did me any harm…

A sudden, incoherent anxiety lurked at his ear, as meaningless as his tears.

So only the Queen had been awake, then. So awake, and hence so tired! For a moment he could almost hear her rich, hoarse, lilting voice.

The skyscrapers of Sacramento, such as they were, rose white and stubby above the dark trestle bridge over which he had just driven, which made a tolerable frontier between the moon-clouds and the long thin water-fingers of orange light. Entering the wooded darkness alongside the river, he began to walk toward the bridge, loaded pistol in the pocket of his big, baggy jacket, and suddently saw a silhouette, stocky and hunched, which stood upon the riverbank, never turning round, although it must have heard his footsteps. The cool air was growing cold.

He walked on, and the tramp rose up behind him and said: What’re you doin’ down here? Fishin’?

Walking, he said. How about you?

Just spendin’ the day out, the tramp said.

He and John had caught some perch here when they were boys, so he said to the tramp: Any perch here?

Nope, said the tramp, walking away.

Ahead, between the trees, he saw a pale light, but when he got to that spot, thinking to see a homeless camp, he found nothing there.

A train whistle, rich with sadness of the longing rather than the despairing kind, drew him on until he stood beneath the bridge, almost blind to the moving of the darkness, which rumbled and squeaked westward; but at strange intervals he’d be granted the sight of vertical light-bars marching by. This train was as endless as darkness — solid it was, heavy, groaning, hissing; while beyond and below its empty purposefulness the river bled and bled from severed fingers of light, and another man stood silhouetted on the shore-sand, gazing down at a lantern, while two silhouettes went fishing. The rump of the last freight car dragged behind it a chain of silence. Foliage reappeared through the trestle’s hollow segments, and the signal rang mutely like a desk-bell at a bank or hotel lobby, while at that moment a real bell began to toll across the river. Tyler looked at his watch, but couldn’t read the dial.

Cause of death colon compression of the neck vessels period, said Dr. Jasper. Severe emphysema comma heart disease comma unrelated to direct cause of death period. No changes consistent with… — as meanwhile Connie lifted off the top quarter of Smooth’s skull, withdrew a syringeful of clear cerebospinal fluid, then with crooked scissors pulled away at the stubbornly crackling meninges. Dr. Jasper, lifting his foot from the dictaphone pedal, swigged from a cup of coffee (which he held in a bloody latex glove) and said: Okay, we still have the neck to take out…

Golden ripples infused the black river, finger-whirls of gods; round lights clustered on the far bank like the leaves of the tree of heaven.

Tyler ascended the smooth-worn embankment, stepped onto the bridge, and began to walk out toward the water, pale dirty darkness far underfoot, while ahead the gleaming tracks, soberly precious, met across the river in four lines of shining silver. Dan Smooth, the Queen, and the two Irenes true and false were all in the place where parallel lines meet. Now the darkness bled and trembled into a silhouette — as unexpected and forced a differentiation as that suffered by the heart-shaped chunk of fatty ribs which Dr. Jasper had crunched out of Dan Smooth’s chest; this darkness ought to have been granted the right to remain itself, but from its flesh, without reference to the shining, burning ribs behind, nonetheless came that silhouette, approaching almost silent, a stranger, a black man with a bedroll who uttered a low, shy greeting, a murmur, and did not stop. Then darkness asserted its rights after all: The man became darkness again. Darkness smiled. Tyler stood alone on the bridge, gazing downriver at the pale yellow glowing phallus which rose from the drawbridge to the south…

| 530 |

He had planned to drive down to L.A. one more time to visit Irene’s grave, but opening the glove compartment to look for the registration, he saw a note in Smooth’s handwriting which read: Henry — Please give the car to Domino.

Tyler clenched his teeth. Then he drove to San Francisco. He parked on Capp Street between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, got out, and locked up, striding along with the car keys jingling in his hand. Nobody on Capp Street, so he went to South Van Ness and by a lucky chance saw Strawberry.

It’s the black Dodge right around the corner there, he said. Give it to Domino. From Dan Smooth.

She stared at him.

Happy fuckin’ New Year, he said.

What are you talking about?

You don’t remember me either, huh? he muttered with a sad grin. I guess I can leave word at the parking garage, too. Does she still use that place for her mail drop?

He dropped the keys in her hand and started to walk away, but when he looked back she was still staring at him with eyes like marbles.

It’s for Domino, he said. You got that, sweetheart?

A flash of terror illuminated her understanding, and she began to piss.

Lift up your skirt or it’ll be bad for business, he said. Oh, hell.

| 531 |

It was almost chilly on Haight Street. Two fat cops slowly trudged past Villain’s. Nobody sat in front of the Goodwill store. In a glitter-shop’s window he saw an old silver-painted wooden crown which reminded him of his Queen. His feet hurt. The sidewalk smelled like meat and urine. On the wall of Cala Foods someone had written: TONIGHT’S A BLAST, TOMORROW YOU’RE HOMELESS.

It was then that he realized he was homeless, too.

| 532 |

And so his way led to the yellow-orange freight cars of the Union Pacific, land-ships of freedom, thrilling the lonely souls who rode them from broken promises to promises not yet broken, ferrying the dead souls from one sunset to another, carrying the fearful and the hopeful out of law’s imminence. Long low warehouses hunkered in the Sacramento twilight. A man lay upon a loading dock, his head pillowed on his bed roll and his boots dangling into space. Tyler heard booming sounds coming from the direction of the ruined mill. A man in a red wool cap walked toward the sunset, holding a Bible near his eyes. Four or five years ago one homeless camp had gotten religion and erected a great cross in the trees, but the new Christ who was going to launch the cult got cancer and died. The long curvy train tracks led to that rotten monument to a dead belief. The smell of creosote annointed him with labor’s seriousness. He knelt and picked up a heavy crooked old spike gone red and yellow with rust. Then he let it fall out of his hand and clang against the steel. His right leg moved, and then his left. With a blanket rolled beneath his arm, he approached the sad self-absorbed hum of generators, passed beneath the conveyor bridge of the Blue Diamond almond factory, and left the hum behind, heading toward the American River, with long trains sleeping beside him. He walked for a long time, but the trains’ length kept pace with him. On one freight car someone had drawn the ace of spades. Then on his left a train loaded with cargo from or for Portland, Oregon, came rapidly, smoking and silhouetted, the heavy cars clattering ear-ringingly, the emptier ones merely clicking. Far ahead, the locomotive reached the trestle bridge and began to slow down. From the doorway of a reddish-brown boxcar leaped a long bedroll, followed by a man who landed softly in the gravel on his knees and outstretched hands, a shirtless man in his late prime whose muscular chest and arms screamed with tattoos. He powerfully rose, slung the bedroll over his shoulder, and began to lope with immense sureness toward another train.

Pardon me, called Tyler.

The man stopped and faced him, alert, unafraid.

What’s the quickest way out of here? said Tyler.

See that track over there? the man said. That goes north.

Any chance of getting locked in?

Take a loose pin and stick it in the boxcar door. I’ve got to head my way now.

The man was gone.

Tyler stood looking after him with admiration. The man had known who he was and what he was about. He was travelling but not searching. Tyler longed to be like him.

Half-heartedly following the track that the man had pointed out, he finally found himself at the skeleton-roofed silver trestle bridge which invited him into the evening river-smell. A tagger who went by the monicker “T.F.” had painted said initials on every strut, and someone else had x’d them out with equal painstakingness, but the black x’s had run and faded after many rainstorms, while T.F.’s blue initials lived triumphantly on. A swastika grinned its crooked grin. Beneath his feet, the river was low and still and silver, bisected by the reflections of cloud trails. Bored, weary, lacking self-surprise, Tyler withdrew his keychain, which clasped the outer and inner keys to his former apartment in San Francisco, his old office key, a key whose provenance he’d forgotten, and the front and back door keys to his mother’s house, let them all roll out of his hand and watched them spread apart in the air like a fist opening, every key glittering white, loose upon the chain, dwindling until they met the water with a ridiculous little splash. The sun began to balefully glow, like the eyes of someone with a lethal secret; but its rays had not yet come to their summer strength, and so the air continued to get cool. A duck quacked, almost in an undertone. The bridge led him on and on. Tyler would not be riding any freight trains today; he was already considerably beyond the place that the tattooed man had pointed out to him.

Halfway across the river, a diamond-shaped concrete platform, graffiti’d with stars, grids and more swastikas, looked out on the water. A man with a long, long beard was sitting on it. The man gazed into Tyler’s eyes and said: I’m lost.

I know the feeling, said Tyler, walking on. Gnats and mosquitoes boiled about his arms.

He came to the far side, and clambered down beneath the bridge where the air was heavy and chilly and a fanged face had been painted on the concrete. He heard a crackling noise. A man came out of the weeds hitching up his trousers and said to Tyler: You fishing?

That describes it pretty well.

Where’s your rod?

Hidden away, said Tyler.

Oh, I love them German browns, said the man. They’re not native fish, but they offer a helluva lot of fight. I go after ’em with anchovies or even rebels. Sometimes I pan for gold.

Uh huh, said Tyler. So you’re looking, too.

Are you a Christian? asked the man.

Only Jesus knows the answer to that, Tyler replied.

Yep, said the man. You can be walking down the road, pickin’ your nose, and it’s still okay to call on Jesus because He loves you; He hears you. You can just say, Jesus, I don’t need nothin’ but I love you.

Is Jesus in all the waste places? Tyler asked.

Friend, Jesus is everywhere.

Even where Cain’s hiding?

No question of it. That old murdering Cain he can’t run no more.

And how about the Land of Canaan?

I ain’t never been there, said the man. But Jesus has. He’s everywhere.

And how about the idols? Tyler went on in a grating tone which startled even himself. — How about them, huh? And how about the Whore of Babylon? How about the Queen of the Whores? Has Jesus taken them all over, too?

There’s always two voices whispering in every man’s head, the fisherman said. One’s Jesus’s voice. And the other — well, friend, you know who the other is. Which voice is whispering in your head right now, bro?

The Queen. And Dan Smooth. And sometimes Irene—

Friend, I’m going to pray over you right now. In just a minute. You have a cigarette?

Where’s the best place to sleep around here? said Tyler.

Just go up that path there and you’ll see plenty of hollows where those bushes are. They look impossible to get into, but if you lay down in there, you’ll find lots of good canopy so no rain can be botherin’ your head. Just lay down there and give some thought to Jesus.

Thanks, said Tyler. He felt a tightness in the back of his head, bone pressing urgently through along the arc where Dr. Jasper’s circular saw had gone to take out Dan Smooth’s brain. The orange sky’s image slowly dulled in the river.

Well? the man said.

Well what?

You gonna listen to Jesus?

Can’t get away from Jesus, that’s for sure, Tyler bitterly replied. Old Jesus has certainly won the victory.

Your words give me joy, friend, the man said. You know why? I used to have a family. Now I’m divorced. I’m an ex-con; I’m an ex-felon. All I have now is Jesus.

Yeah, I know you do, said Tyler.

You got a cigarette?

I only smoke rock.

You might be able to score something down the river there, where that smoke’s coming up through the trees…

All right. Good to meet you, said Tyler, heading on into moist darkness scented with anise. The crickets sang. His mother had hated crickets. He remembered once coming home — it must have been in around 1970—and when they pulled into the driveway his mother screamed because the porch was black with crickets. She stayed in the car until he got a broom from the garage and swept then all away…

| 533 |

We call this place Coffee Camp because whenever you come by, we’ll give you coffee if we have it. If we don’t, we’ll boil some leaves, or dead cats, or whatever.

Oh, shut up, said Dragonfly. To Tyler he said: That’s just Donald talking.

I’m Donald, said Donald. What’s your name?

Henry, said Tyler. Pleased to meet you.

At Coffee Camp, at least you won’t go thirsty! cried Donald with black-toothed enthusiasm. You want me to boil some leaves or something?

Shut up, Donald, said Dragonfly.

That’s all right, Tyler said, seeing by their firelight a toilet paper roll on a stump, two bumpy foam mattresses, a lovingly potted weed not yet dead, some blankets, a half-full pack of cigarettes lying on the sand.

He’s retarded, Dragonfly explained. He’s a moron. I kind of look after him. His Mama gave birth to him in an outhouse. By the time they dug him out of the shithole, he was half suffocated. They say it affected his brain.

How often do you guys actually serve coffee around here? said Tyler, suddenly wanting some.

Never. When we get coffee — which isn’t very often — we drink it right up. Why? You have some? Donald would sure be tickled.

Don’t believe I do.

You won’t go thirsty, Donald repeated.

Sounds like a regular Java palace around here.

No, stranger, said Donald. It’s not Java Camp. It’s only Coffee Camp.

They sat in silence for a while. Just above Tyler’s head, the moon bulged and burned through the foliage. From across that river so beautifully cool with wrinkles of night came the greensmoke-smell of a campfire which resembled a quivering yellow diamond. Somewhere near or far, a flashlight swung at ankle height, swung through the crackling bushes. He heard a dog’s bark. Then the moon burst through the bushes, and the world was bright.

My name’s Dragonfly, said Dragonfly. You looking for a place to camp? Not that I’m meaning to meddle or nothing.

Yeah, in fact I am.

You can sleep under that tree if you want.

All right.

Hey, Dragonfly, said Donald. What’s his name again?

My name’s Henry, said Tyler.

Henry, can I tell you something?

Sure, Donald. You go right ahead.

I just wanted to tell you that whenever we make coffee here at Coffee Camp, it feels just like Sunday. When the coffee starts to boil, Henry, well, I–I feel like I’m in church. I wanted to tell you that.

Thanks for letting me know, said Tyler, unrolling his blanket.

That’s all he talks about, Dragonfly explained. And you know the pisser? He don’t even like the taste of coffee!

Across the river, he could hear his fellow souls breaking branches for their fire, with a noise like exploding firecrackers.

What’s your name again? said Donald.

Cain, said Tyler. Don’t you see the mark on my forehead? Now, Donald, I want you to listen to me. I’m running away, and I don’t want to talk to anybody anymore. Now let me sleep.

| 534 |

When he awoke the next morning, an hour or so after dawn, it was already as hot as black, creosoted railroad gravel on a Sacramento summer’s day — windy over the green water, the steel bridge walkway trembling under his tread. It might have been the third anniversary of Irene’s suicide, but he was less than entirely certain; perhaps he was finished with dates. He saw a crew of homeless men sitting under a tree with their dog. He nodded, but they stared him down. Coming to the cagelike maze between railroad cars, he found no signs of any impending departure from Coffee Camp. His prospects remained unchanged, at least until he ended up on Dr. Jasper’s table, and he was hot and sweating. To further his education he swung himself up into the chest-high cave of an open railroad car, inside which a treasury of initials and dates had been scribbled, marked and carved upon hurtfully hot metal walls. The car was hollow and vast. He felt like a single grain of salt in an empty shaker. The question he had to decide consisted of two parts. The first was: Should I live or die? The second was: How should I live or die? He found himself unable to conclude anything. Seeking to flee the glary illumination thus cast upon his freedom, he boarded a passing memory-train, revisiting first his brother’s late wife, who admitted to being afraid of so many things; when she was young, Irene used to wear her hair in a bun until a neighborhood boy told her that if she did that, spiders could nest inside and in the night time they’d crawl down and eat her eyes. — I used to have all these ideas, she’d said to Tyler once — at which John, gazing good-humoredly up from his laptop, snickered: As if ideas would do you any good! — But Irene had been riding her own train. John would not be able to derail her self-sorrow so easily. — I used to want to accomplish all these things, but I never did anything, she went on. And now I know I’m never going to do anything. I’m just going to have a protected, boring life. Sometimes I feel disappointed, but I have to remember that God is protecting me from a lot of bad things. — Uh huh, Tyler had said, pitying her so well that for a moment his own life took on almost a royal luster: hidden (or not) in everyone’s mind, he’d become sure then, were the same two fears: fear of the unknown bad things, and fear that one’s known good things might be even worse than those. No one was free, he said to himself; but today as he sat in the boxcar by Coffee Camp, this truism, which sometimes soothed him into a beneficent smugness, merely increased his restless terror.

In his pocket he had sixty-two dollars — more than most people at Coffee Camp possessed, perhaps, but once it was gone it was gone. Thus fear of the unknown. What he ought to do was lie low on a piece of cardboard and stretch his money out, but he couldn’t: fear of the known. The Queen, Smooth, his mother, and the two Irenes haunted him. — Well, that’s a natural part of getting older, he thought. Other people die first, and then their ghosts perch on your shoulders, like the cargo of steel rods on that open boxcar…

Resolving to wander among the hollows until he found someone who could give him good advice (for his mind felt as empty and echoey as the car he sat in), he let himself down, and, hurriedly recrossing the bridge, reclaimed his blanket from Donald and Dragonfly’s camp. Neither of those two was anywhere in sight, so he wandered down the dirt road which ran through the weeds until he saw a bush shake. Squatting and bending, a human being emerged, rear end first, from a thicket, calling warning to his girlfriend still in the cave. Straightening and turning round, the man approached Tyler through the waist-high hissing grass.

What do you want? the man said threateningly. You trying to spy on us?

That’s just what my brother used to ask me, Tyler answered, turning his back on the man and beginning to walk away. But the man flew after him and seized him by the shoulder, digging in with long sharp fingernails. Wordlessly, Tyler swung round and punched his face. The man went down, sinking in the grass.

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave me alone, Tyler addressed him. I don’t take kindly to being grabbed from behind.

The grass didn’t answer.

Do you hear? Tyler said.

The grass still didn’t answer.

Just like John… he sighed again, and continued his search for a good adviser, turning off the road into higher grass which sometimes flattened into cardboard-paved hollows. It was early May, but already some blackberries were ripe. Hearing a tree’s creaking chuckle, he whirled round, but did not discover the man he had punched — nor, indeed, anyone. He followed a narrow trail which led him to a shopping cart filled with water jugs, a mattress whose blankets were thrown back, purses hanging on a tree branch, an open watercolor set. Nobody. The trail led him out of the trees, onto a field of immense girdered power towers, so he followed it back to a junction and chose another path which went beneath a fringe of dead branches to a very dark hollow, a weedy niche of pollen-fuzzed cardboard sheets hidden among the trees and plant-stalks. The trail dipped deeper, and brought him to a huge fire, beside which a squint-eyed and shirtless man who smelled like woodsmoke stood holding a can of beer. — What’s up, bro? the shirtless man said warily.

Tyler had a bad feeling about the man and the place, probably on account of the other man who had grabbed him. It seemed to him that he was among ogres. So he merely said: Will this trail take me on through to the river?

Right on through, said the shirtless man, watching him carefully. Tyler now saw that the man’s left hand gripped the hilt of a long hunting knife which hung in a sheath at his belt.

Is this all Coffee Camp? Tyler asked, sweeping his hand about.

I never heard of no Coffee Camp.

Last night I was staying with Donald and Dragonfly. That’s all they talked about.

Never heard of them, either.

Thanks for your time, sir, said Tyler as courteously as he could, sauntering up the trail, which now began to climb steeply up again toward the river. He ducked around a hollow tree studded with an immense burl like some fibroid tumor, and arrived on the ridge.

A woman was singing. He listened, swallowing. Her song reminded him of the sadness which scaled his heart, like the islands of rust on a boxcar’s thickly crusted and peeling paint.

He walked toward the song. In the blackberry brambles on the river bluff, he saw a black woman on a blanket, singing about her own Jesus as she gazed across the turquoise river at Sacramento. He listened. The song was wild and loving. He stood there until she had finished.

I feel good listening to you, he said.

No need to shine about it, the woman said, smiling at him. You got a good angel.

My angel is dead, he replied.

Maybe she is, but she’s still lovin’ you and helpin’ you.

A train sang far away, calling to the sand, the dusty weeds, the purple flower-clusters, the tarps under trees, uttering its longings to the voices rising like smoke from those deep hollows.

Do you hear that? the black woman said. That’s your angel callin’ you. She’s tellin’ you to come to her. You can’t stay around Coffee Camp no more. Coffee Camp’s just a waitin’ kind of place. You got to go to your angel.

My angel’s name is Africa.

I know it, the black woman said. Now go hop one of them trains. Do it now.

I don’t know how, he said.

You’re gonna love it, honey.

Tyler sighed. — Well, maybe I ought to stay here and not find her, instead of going far away and not finding her. I honestly think she’s dead.

You’re not old yet, the black woman said sternly. Go on! Africa’s crying for you!

So what do you like the best about hopping freight trains?

The noise. That rattling noise. And the way they have tracks everywhere. I remember when I was a little girl and saw my first train I got so excited. I asked my Mama: What’s that? And remember what I told you: Tracks go ‘most anywhere. Tracks even go to glory, maybe. Everytime I hop on one of them trains I think maybe this one will bring me to glory. I’m the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen!

| 535 |

He found an abandoned campsite, lay down on his face, and slowly chewed a mouthful of dirt because he knew that he would never stay a Canaanite if he didn’t degrade and martyrize himself like a whore telling her customer to use whatever hole he wanted. It made him sick. He wished that he had eaten dirt from Irene’s grave. Rolling onto a rotten sheet of cardboard which smelled like urine and unwashed feet, he fell asleep and all day dreamed gloomy dreams of his Queen. Later he suspected that he might have dreamed of Sapphire, too, but he wasn’t sure. He awoke heavy and sluggish. The thought that he had wasted another day of his life, instead of riding a boxcar in obedience to the black woman’s word, pained and shamed him. He wanted to go seek her out this very moment and beg her forgiveness. Struggling to his feet, he observed local conditions: a high full moon above the weeds of Coffee Camp, anise smell after a hundred-degree day. Silhouettes of moths visited the looming anise stalks.

He went to the place where he’d seen the black woman, but in the darkness vaguely made out what seemed to be the silhouette of two figures sleeping in each other’s arms. He walked quietly away.

A tall silhouette wavered on the bridge. It was Water Woman, whom Tyler would never get to know. Beyond her sat a circle of men with their backpacks and growling dog. They uttered quiet deep laughs, gazing at the sky. A barefoot man with his shoes in his hands led his dog across the bridge. Tyler listened to the clicking of the dog’s paws.

And now memories came down like horses, neighing against the gates of his mind. He remembered how he had once been alone with Irene in her car, driving across the Bay Bridge, and he patted her thigh. He could not help himself. She went on driving.

He stroked Irene’s hair. His hand was between her legs.

You like that? she said.

Yes, darling, he said thickly.

He was stroking her cunt now.

You like to touch that? she said, gazing at him without expression.

Very much.

She went on driving. (No, that wasn’t Irene, it was the Cambodian girl — what was her name?

He remembered Irene’s eyes, Irene’s dark, made-up eyes, almost sickeningly beautiful, certainly hurtfully so, while fireworks pounded like his heart.

He remembered the Queen’s dark, scarred little face. He remembered going fishing with John up near Placerville when he was a boy. He remembered the moving stream of heads in Chinatown, heads like boulders in a stream.

Suddenly he felt that his position in the world was absolutely intolerable. He could not remain at Coffee Camp for another instant. He could scarcely bear to remain himself.

A new campfire, which appeared to be just above the shoreline, swelled into hemisphericality like a rising second moon. Twin fires made a tunnel of light beneath a tree.

Now he realized that he had left his blanket somewhere, but he could not for the life of him recall the place — probably Donald and Dragonfly’s camp, but he felt an inexplicable revulsion against going there…

From under the other bridge, the railroad bridge, women’s husky voices and radio music ascended through the grating. Over the river, the pale full moon left a trail of shimmering greenish wrinkles. A train blared in the night, its utterance hollowing and decreasing in pitch, like metallic fluid being poured out of an immense metal jug.

I missed my train again, he thought to himself in agony.

He walked across the railroad bridge, leaving Coffee Camp, he hoped forever.

| 536 |

A steamy hissing from the almond factory accompanied him on his journey into darkness. He entered the train tunnel and heard a spooky laugh, and then footfalls running echoingly away. The twin track-ribbons were dull grey, leading him deeper into the trap. A crunch of broken glass around the railroad pillars exemplified the brittleness of the night.

| 537 |

A man stood in the center of the tunnel, barring his way. Tyler said to the man: I’m hungry.

Silently, the man reached inside his jacket and pulled out a dirty crust of bread. He broke off a hunk and put it into Tyler’s hand.

Thank you, brother, said Tyler.

The man laughed. His laugh echoed. He stepped aside, and Tyler went on.

At sunrise he was walking between two very long trains whose boxcars blanketed most of the world with immense shadow-blocks interrupted by narrow ribbons of light.

| 538 |

I’m hungry, Tyler said to a man.

The man said: My name is Peter. What’s your name?

Henry.

Come in, Henry, said the man, and I’ll give you the most nourishing food there is.

He led Tyler into a room where there was nothing but a table, two chairs and a Bible.

I wouldn’t mind a glass of water, Tyler said.

First things first, said Peter. Have you been saved?

Depends on whom you talk to. Would you have anything to eat?

The essence of Christ is forgiveness, Peter said. Christianity is the only religion which forgives. I can testify to that, because God has forgiven me. When Jesus forgives us, he buries our sins so deep and so far that we remember them but we feel no pain. I’m saying that to you personally, Henry.

I guess you are, said Tyler, shifting in his chair. I mean, I appreciate that.

The Bible does not leave any room for speculation, Peter went on earnestly, and Tyler nodded with a glum face and said: I wish it did.

Any questions so far? asked Peter.

What’s your position on Catholics? asked Tyler, just to say something.

We’ve got a wonderful woman, a Catholic woman, on our board of directors. She received Christ as her Lord but she still lives within the Catholic church.

Suddenly Tyler rose to his feet and said: I have something to say to Jesus.

Peter cocked his head, a little disconcerted. — And what might that be?

Tyler took a deep breath. He gazed upward at the bare light bulb. Then he shouted:

Let my people go!

| 539 |

On the concrete embankment, chin-bone of the night, an immense whitish menacing face winked its painted eye.

| 540 |

I’m hungry, he said.

Then get a job, the woman said.

| 541 |

I can boil some leaves for you if you want, said Donald. I’d be happy to do it. Because this is Coffee Camp.

Little white speedboats and jet-skis played upon the river, sometimes wiping out and making big waves. He heard the laughter of the unhomeless. Fat oiled legs clenched small boats.

I need to get out of here, he said.

Dragonfly likes to say that, too, said Donald. What did you say your name was?

A pair of knees and a cap passed along the riverbank, enthroning themselves upon a sofa statioined amidst concrete. Donald’s voice was as brassy as a train horn. It was early afternoon. Gazing around, Tyler seemed to see a beer bottle in the crotch of every tree. He listened to the ringing clinking of the signal on the trestle bridge, and despaired.

| 542 |

You have to be careful, Jose said. Sometimes it go fast and sometimes it go slow. When it go fast, dem wheel can chop off your arm or leg just like that. Can kill you. Dat’s why I ride my bike. I ride my bike down to San Diego no problem.

How long does that take?

One or two week. Sometimes one or two month. I don’t care. My wife is dead. Nobody to hurry up for no more…

You must meet bad people from time to time, said Tyler.

Laughing grimly, Jose flashed a serrated kitchen knife and said: Die is OK. But I tell them, cut de throat is a bad way to die. You cut your finger with a knife by mistake, and you feel that pain right away for fifteen minute. I think just see the knife, start the pain. And when I cut your throat, you got mebbe two long, long minutes, man…

| 543 |

Here’s how I know where to git off, Riley the tramp explained. I git on in Roseville shitfaced drunk, and when that wine wears off, I know I’m in Reno.

Uh huh, said Tyler.

Jist do zackly like I tole you. An’ be sure you jump off before you get to the yard.

Even if it’s moving?

Well, no. You wanna lose a leg? Wait till it stops. Dead stops.

| 544 |

Slipping onto a boxcar, he waited for hours, but it never moved.

| 545 |

Then finally came the night when the yellow eyes of the train’s face came boring along the embankment so that the trestle burst into radiant light; and from among the squatting backpackers silhouetted at trackside Tyler ran, seized the first ladder of a boxcar, not the dangerous second one, and pulled himself up, threw himself in, and clackety-clacked triumphant into the darkness.

| 546 |

Trains and trains and trains: he wanted to ride them all! Long blue cloud-lines shot across the salmon-colored sky, stretching on like railroad tracks. Riley the tramp, hunched and grizzled, would be proud of him yet. See Tyler at seven on a June evening with the Sierras faint and bleached-blue on the horizon, at his ease in an open boxcar which was creeping into the yard at Roseville, probably seen but ignored by the benign and brawny driver whose arm he could see hanging out of the locomotive window. The train slowed. He threw his bedroll out and leaped, not wanting to meet any yard bulls because he’d been warned that Roseville was a hot yard, but his precautions were about as availing as superstitions because everything was already very open and exposed there among the slow trains. Long black cylinder cars of liquefied petroleum gas moved slowly forward and back, their rusty wheels turning slowly enough for him to count the revolutions. He wanted to climb between the cars so that he could get to the edge of the yard and run, but didn’t dare. Suddenly there came a tremendous slamming boom, and the cars stopped, then eased backward again, creaking. The whole horizon was train. When the cars were still, he rushed between them, arriving just in time to hide behind an oak tree before the bull in the blue uniform came motor-scootering by…

Thanks to the benevolence of the city council, the Home Start shelter disallowed single men from sleeping there, so a drunk warned, and Tyler had neither means nor inclination to bring a whore along to be his wife, so he trudged directly to the park and napped uneasily until dawn, attacked by mosquitoes from the river. With relief he returned to the edge of the yard, an inch on the legal side of the NO TRESPASSING sign, watching the trains. Immense shadow-blocks craned across the embankment, carving up his world. — Jist wait in the shade, Riley the tramp had advised him. Wait by the liquor store. — That was easy, because right now it was all shade. Under the Crystal Dairy trucks lay old clothes and empty sardine tins; his predecessors had taken their shade where they could find it. Blue-overalled trackmen rollstepped in the distance, speaking into walkie-talkies. Everybody said that trainhopping was more likely to get punished now that Union Pacific had bought Southern Pacific.

A freight train lay still and ready, with three locomotives on it. That meant it was going somewhere. Looking both ways, he spied no spies, and ran to the open boxcar. He threw himself in, insured his life with the spikenail, crawled into the back, and met a migrant worker who smiled at him gravely. He offered the man a drink of water. The man smiled, and gave him a fresh ripe peach.

The boxcar jerked. The train began to move.

| 547 |

Well, looky here, laughed the railroad dick. All right, fellas. You might as well come out now.

His heart overwhelmed him with booming echoes as of dark boxcars.

Come back here now, said the railroad dick.

The train slid away, leaving him and the Mexican alone on the gravel with the railroad dick. It was almost night. At the back of the receding train blinked a red eye. That was FREDdy, the Fucking Rear End Device. A tramp had said that it was called that because it had stolen three railwaymen’s jobs. FREDdy flashed triumphantly in the twilight. Two more parasites, two more evildoers had fallen into the hands of the righteous.

You first, said the railroad dick. What’s your name?

Tyler, said Tyler.

What’s your excuse?

I’m homeless.

Yeah, you could pass for homeless. That’s against the law. Don’t get upwind of me. I could cite you. I should cite you. Now get out.

Thanks, said Tyler, as sincerely as he could. He started walking away.

Now you, said the railroad dick to the Mexican. We don’t call you wetbacks no more. Call you scratchbacks from duckin’ under the border fence. Call you gravelknees. Is that right? Hey, fella, are you a scratchback?

The Mexican smiled and nodded three times quickly.

Okay. That’s the spirit. Now beat it, and don’t let me catch you riding my train again.

When Tyler and the Mexican were out of sight, the railroad dick radioed the locomotive and told the driver that his two unwanted pasengers were gone.

What were they this time? asked the driver, bored.

Usual. One drunk and one Spic.

Used to be just them hobos, the driver ruminated. Pleasant people. Sometimes you just gotta throw rocks at ’em. And them migrant workers, them scratchbacks. But now I keep seeing the gangs. They use my train for transportation. They got guns. What am I supposed to do against a gun?

Carry a gun, laughed the railroad dick.

| 548 |

Well, see, those people are kinda leery, unless you have the look, the tattooed man said.

So you’re saying I don’t have it, said Tyler. Ain’t that a shame.

That’s what I’m saying. Now, that Mexican there, he has it, but who cares? He’s just a Mexican. As for you, they gotta be careful. Maybe somebody could justify how you look, but they don’t trust you.

Who doesn’t trust me, partner? You?

The Mexican waved and began to walk away. Tyler waved back, a little sadly.

What are you about? asked the tattooed man.

Riding the rails, I guess, said Tyler. How come I need to justify my existence to you?

The tattooed man smiled weakly and resentfully, his gaze like some cold yellow light at the end of a long trestle bridge, and Tyler sighed.

All right, he said.

What are you about? asked the tattooed man again, standing in his way like a sentinel in some ancient myth.

Looking for somebody I know I’ll never find, said Tyler. Getting away from people who know me.

Amen to that, said the tattooed man; and Tyler felt that he had answered correctly and could move on. — So which way goes east? he said.

As far as how to go, said the tattooed man, carefuly spying him out, they got certain routes. There’s certain places they got to catch you, but normally they let you do it. I more or less quit doing it after my last stretch in jail. I don’t really enjoy dogging it that much. Where you from?

Sacramento.

Oh. Well, what’re you gonna do? You got to run it somewhere else. Sac’s just got that evil feel to it. Just feels too negative to me.

Tell me about it. I was born there.

The tattooed man laughed, his eyes yellow like empty plastic cigarette lighters on railroad gravel.

So where was you an’ that Mexican when you got busted?

Boxcar, said Tyler.

Normally, the boxcar’s the lousiest ride you can get. I can see you need advice. Now, the ones that know, they’re lookin’ for the grainers, those T-48s or whatever. There are holes in the back. You just pop right in like a prairie dog. And you got water? You don’t want to go without a bunch of water.

Yeah, I have water, said Tyler. And when that runs out, I can just marry somebody and drink her spit.

Ooh, said the tattooed man with a sort of sinister gentleness.

So which track runs east?

Normally, see, some people are hooked up with the people in the yard. There’s certain tracks set up already. So if I want to go to Salt Lake, these here are the tracks I can get on. You got another track there that’s gonna wind north. Let’s say you want to go to Washington…

And suddenly Tyler felt an exultation that he hadn’t been able to own for so long now, a breezy thrill of freedom even as he stood there sweating with the evening sun burning his arms. He could go anywhere. He had nothing to guard and defend except his own body. He had fallen, but he had landed. Now he was happy and safe.

The tattooed man read his eyes and said: There’s something about trainhoppers, anyway. All of us are transients on this earth. I’m a Buddhist. This is just taking it to the next level.

And you feel free? Tyler couldn’t help asking.

My whole concept is, what’s out there and rolls my way I have a right to. Like if I go into a supermarket and can walk out with a can of tomato soup in my pocket and they don’t catch me, I have a right to it. See what I’m sayin’? Because they’re bilking the world anyway. And when I steal from them, nobody gets hurt.

Well, I guess I’ll be heading my way, Tyler said. Thank you.

I been wanting to ride the rails myself, the tattooed man suddenly volunteered. I just can’t decide which direction to go…

Behind the man’s wistfulness, behind his softspoken charm, Tyler had begun to sense a crocodile’s soul, intelligent and vicious, perhaps even lethal — held in check right now mainly by the inertia of this exceedingly hot day (certainly over a hundred degrees). If a cloud were to pass over the sun, so that the tattooed man’s reptilian blood could cool sufficiently to refresh his torpid brain, then Tyler might be in danger. This was only intuition, and very possibly wrong, like the intuition of so many street-whores who had been sure at first that Tyler was a cop; nonethless, he was afraid of the tattooed man.

I’ll walk up with you, the tattooed man said with an insidious grin.

Why, thank you, said Tyler, his heart pounding.

This used to be the Greyhound bus station, right here where it says GOLF, the tattooed man was saying. I know where I’d catch out if I was riding. See that track there, with all those grainers? That’s where I’d catch out.

All right, said Tyler plodding steadily toward the sleeping train.

Watch out for the heat, laughed the tattooed man lazily, although they must be sweatin’ it more than ever, I mean those cops.

Okay. See you when I look at you, said Tyler.

And watch out for the Sidetrack types. You remember Sidetrack? He rode the rails and he befriended trainhoppers like you, and then in the night he slit their throats. Ha, ha, ha!

I hope he enjoyed it, said Tyler wearily, looking for the perfect grainer to crawl into, one where the hole would be too small for him and the tattooed man together.

Shit, he got caught right here, in this fuckin’ town. The fuckin’ S.P. bulls said he told them he was just cleanin’ up the lowlifes, the ripoff artists.

You a friend of his? asked Tyler.

No, but I know a woman who used to know him. You want to meet her?

No, I think I’ll take this bus, said Tyler, clambering up up the ladder of a grainer whose oval womb, as he could see, was choked with juice bottles, wine bottles and crumpled newspapers. This train had been thoroughly hopped. Now he was high above the world. Safe and lofty, he waved to the tattooed man.

Hey, I’m kind of broke, said the tattooed man. You mind helping me out?

Here’s a buck, said Tyler, letting the paper note flutter down.

That’ll work, said the tattooed man. Well, watch out, or somebody just might get you.

Thanks for the warning, Sidetrack, replied Tyler with a harsh and ugly laugh…

| 549 |

It took a good three hours before the train began to slam and thud, and another hour or so before it went anywhere. When he finally felt the clittery-clatter in his bones, Tyler stuck his head out of the hole and saw in the hole of the facing car the head of an ancient black man. He waved, and the black man smiled at him.

Somewhere in the desert before Salt Lake, the train stopped for an hour, and he woke up and looked out. The black man looked back at him.

Where you bound, sonny? said the black man.

Bound for heaven, sir, said Tyler.

Just remember, child, you’re only stealin’ a ride. Nothin’ else. Don’t you harm anything on them cars. Don’t take nothin’. The railroad is good to us. It gives us our freedom. Don’t you take advantage of that.

All right. Kind of a nice ride up here, don’t you think?

The black man smiled. It was the smile of one who knew. He said to Tyler: If you ain’t seen America on a boxcar, you ain’t seen America.

| 550 |

Striding into Coffee Camp like a conqueror, he found at afternoon’s end the black woman, the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen, who had herself, as she said, just emerged from the long, long place between two trains where rectangular worlds of boxcar-shadow were separated by narrow bright zones of sunlight on the gravel, and she didn’t remember him. Midges crawled like flecks of living gold in the sun-barred air between vine covered trees. The sandy space where he’d slept at Donald and Dragonfly’s camp a month ago was already bursting with poison oak. Mosquitoes bit him silently. Above the black woman’s Jesus-singing, strange half-shadowed lattices of trumpet vines greenly glowed in the dusk. He could smell smoke and roasting hot dogs.

I still feel good listening to you, he said.

Who the fuck are you? she said.

The one you told to go ride the trains to find my angel.

And you done it, she said, softening. I can see you done it.

He grinned, filled with pride.

And you found your lovin’ angel, she said.

Actually, I’m getting pretty sure I’ll never see her again. But if I keep looking, it gives me something to do.

So you didn’t find her? That why you come back to Coffee Camp, with your tail between your legs? Maybe you just don’t believe.

Maybe I never did, he said sadly.

But she helped you, the black woman insisted, her sentences thrilling him like Union Pacific locomotives riding backward, ringing their bells. — You rode them trains when you thought you couldn’t do it. That’s good for you. That train wind baptizes all your sorrow away. Even just come and go, come and go, those trains takin’ you somewhere. Takin’ you to freedom.

You feel like taking a walk with me, Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen?

Honey, I’m not your queen and I’m not your angel but if you want to take a walk with me I’ll gladly welcome you home. Just a minute. Just a minute. Let my hide my stash in this hollow tree…

On the concrete under the bridge, someone had painted a giant purple heart. He took her hand in his and touched it to the heart. She kissed him. Just then a yellow and red Union Pacific train flickered overhead, and night came and sun and colors were lost. He heard a woman’s screaming laugh.

That night the black woman was sleeping in another’s arms. His soul began to swing back to loneliness, like the bridge between Sacramento and West Sacramento pivoting on its cylindrical concrete base, turning counterclockwise to rejoin its own metal flesh, swinging like a door, its shadow following it upon the water, slow and slow; then suddenly no lacuna anymore; the rails now went all the way from West Sac to Old Sac; and a metal piece dropped and a white box hummed. The bridge swung again, adjusted again, until the raised rails dropped with a slam. Now anyone could walk like Jesus over the sunny green water.

He wandered through midtown and reached that bridge one day; then he crossed it, standing where he’d stood on that night now months ago when he’d come in Dan Smooth’s car; and looking down and to the side, he perceived three who sat beneath the bridge with their hats on — a woman between two men, bleary-eyed railroad tramps swinging their arms at their sides. The Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen was the woman. She began to unzip one man’s fly and the man grunted, his breath full of beer.

Not jealous, not sick at heart, not even empty, he slept in the bushes on the West Sacramento side that night, in an abandoned camp with plenty of pieces of cardboard. He smelled bad, and he had holes in his shirt. He wanted to bathe in the river, but it was too cold. The next morning he returned to the greasy ledge where the three had been, and found the black woman’s dress, slick and silky to his touch, probably rayon, with a dozen cigarette butts beside it, and above its collar, empty air. A drunk lay above him, cackling. Pawn of providence, the drunk threw down in place of the black woman’s missing head a woman’s wadded-up panties which were now stiff and dusty and the color of mud; and this sad ball duly landed on the ledge just above the collar of that blue dress which he remembered from yesterday. Then the drunk staggered down beside him and pissed on everything. Tyler walked on, continuing beneath the belly of that strange half-living armature for tramps and trains, the river lashing and sizzling against the embankment below. Overhead came the rumbling roar as the train crossed the river.

| 551 |

He learned how to scoop out for himself a hollow along the riverbank laid down with cardboard and jugs, and sometimes even with a couple of coats. Nine in the morning, and he could already tell that the day was going to be as hot as Mexicali, everyone sweating and lurking in the shade. A guy in a white sombrero and grey coveralls hitched up his belt. Hiding the railroad spike underneath his shirt, Tyler went to the shelter, got his ticket, played poker for cigarettes with an old goner named Red, stood in line for two hours, and got lunch.

You have to deal with the total man, preached Reverend Bobby as they all ate. — Part of our Christianity has to deal with puttin’ food on a mon’s table. History has taught us that the church has sometimes gone overboard, like in the Inquisition days, and we have to strive for balance.

In one ear and out the other! a man muttered, furtively, like a first-grader warned by the teacher not to talk.

After lunch, Tyler went to Reverend Bobby and asked: Where did evil come from?

Satan, mon.

Did Satan invent the Mark of Cain?

Those questions aren’t for the likes of you, said Reverend Bobby. You have your own problems to deal with. Don’t worry about technicalities.

Somebody said I have the Mark of Cain on my forehead, Reverend. I was wondering if you could see anything right here…

Good Lord, mon, that’s just a mosquito bite you’ve been scratchin’. That’s just—

Reverend, do I bear the Mark of Cain or not?

Do you believe you deserve to bear it?

Yes.

Then you bear it. Have you ever been baptized?

When I was christened.

That doesn’t count. You have to be baptized anew. What’s your name?

Henry.

Henry, are you prepared to receive the sacrament of holy baptism today?

I don’t know, Tyler said. I guess I’m still trying to figure out what I ought to be.

| 552 |

A man was sitting beside a culvert, reading his Bible by lantern light whose brightness stained his hands and knees and forehead. Every moment or two, the man swept mosquitoes away from his face. Crickets sang around him, and moths visited his lantern in its harshly lit patch of sand. Far away, a boxcar door slammed. A dog was barking in the darkness. Above him, where the gulley ended, stretched a lightless field whose laborers had at twilight resembled blurred bushes. He was reading in the Book of Chronicles about the reign of the unclean Queen Athaliah, who was overwhelmed in the end by the soldiers, captains and trumpets of righteousness; and she tore her clothes and cried treason. Then Jehoiada the priest made a channel like a long train track between his rows of captains, and he commanded: Bring her out between the ranks; anyone who follows her is to be slain with the sword. And he who read knew then that he should have followed his Queen and died with her; and so he wept. And the captains dragged her to the Horse Gate, which was a safely unholy place, and executed her there. Then all the people did go to the House of Baal, and razed it. Baal’s altars and images they rent in pieces; and they slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. He crushed the mosquitoes on his face, so far from her whom he had loved, distant even from Coffee Camp where upon the river which beneath the moon was as a pale blue stone the struts of the reflected bridge formed a rake’s teeth, which combed and devoured everything as Jehoiada the priest had done. Righteousness, malignant and sure of itself, rose up against the sky.

He stood up. A barely discernible figure was approaching on the white road. Suddenly he believed that his Queen had once passed here, and he knelt to kiss the road.

A light blossomed inside a bush, and he saw two tramps, sitting unspeaking. Dogs barked. The approaching figure, which he could now see was that of a woman with a water-jug in her hand, muttered wearily: Shut up! Shut the fuck up! — And, strangely, the dogs stopped.

That gal got the power, one of the tramps said wisely.

The woman passed and was lost. Tyler said to the tramp: What’s the secret of power? What do you know?

You don’t got the right to know, the tramp said. Not yet.

You don’t know me.

When you got the right to know, you’ll know. Then you don’t got to ask. You want to know about power? Wait till you feel a cop’s boot in your face…

Were you ever at Coffee Camp? Tyler asked him conversationally. That’s the place, you know, where sometimes the river smells like oranges.

Yeah, yeah, you come out of California, the tramp said. You got it easy. Your kind throw their bike up on them boxcars. We call you rubber tramps. That’s why you don’t know about power yet. When you know, you ain’t gonna like it. You got to travel more. And I don’t just mean on earth. Look up there at them stars. More stars than skeeter-bugs. Look at that expanse up there where it’s all windy and fresh. What’s occurred to me, friend, is enormous changes over the expanse of time. I can’t even really express it. But I know what I feel.

So you know about good power, too, said Tyler. That’s what I want to learn about. I already know about bad power, maybe as much or more than you.

What are you talking to me for then? You ought to be talking to them stars. Then stars will tell you everything.

Thank you, friend, said Tyler.

He went back down into his hollow, where the mosquitoes were now not quite so greedy, and read his Bible. Then he closed the lantern-valve and looked up at the stars, longing to be alone and away from lurking humanity, from the crouchers and the sleepers, alone with ducks, crickets and stars.

Points of light came down the gulley, moving like fireflies, and he wanted to believe that it was the stars talking to him. But the lights rushed and jerked too much. Gruff voices swore, and then he heard a man pissing in the sand. On the road, he heard the clatter of a shopping cart.

| 553 |

The next morning the two tramps were snoring under their bush, dead drunk, and another old fellow, unshaven and lean, but with neatly slicked back hair and wearing new clothes and fine hiking boots (the reason he looked so good, as it turned out, was that he’d just gotten out of detox), sat up against a tree reading a thriller.

You heard about FREDdy? he said to Tyler.

Yeah, I heard.

You heard how that goddamned machine took away three good men’s jobs. Now on the whole train they only have two men, the engineer and the conductor or whatever the hell he’s called. Well, sometimes they have an inspector, too, but he lies low so he can catch you. Eventually they’ll get rid of all the humans. They’ll have just computers and lasers.

I’m surprised they don’t have a sensor on every boxcar, Tyler said. That way they could bust us all, no sweat.

They tried that. Had the heat-seeking kind. But when them wheels get hot, they get so hot, why, them sensors get confused. Had to rip ’em all out.

Uh huh, said Tyler, not quite believing it, sipping from his water bag.

How long you been catching out, son?

Just a couple of months. How about you?

The very first time I ever hopped a train, I must have been about ten years old. That was back in Missouri. That’s why my handle’s Missouri. My kid brother and I, we jumped on, right by the crick that ran near our house, and we rode about three miles and then walked back, just to try it. Man, we was scared!

Does your brother still ride the rails?

I ain’t seen him in about ten years. I ain’t seen my two sisters in fourteen years. But I seen my other brother recently. He’s collecting SSI, just like me. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic. I see him whenever I go home. I go home about every two years, whenever I lose my birth certificate.

Your folks still alive?

I never knew my father. My mother died years ago. The hospital killed her, Missouri suddenly snarled, and gazed at Tyler expectantly, waiting to be asked to tell the whole sad story, but Tyler didn’t feel like it.

I don’t suppose you’ve seen a small thin black woman, he began hopelessly, about forty-five years old, who—

Missouri looked him over scornfully. — If you got to have more than one person in order to survive, you don’t belong out here.

And you’ve been alone your entire life, said Tyler in a tone of almost nasty defiance.

Oh, I lasted almost six months with one partner once, said Missouri. He went into one detox place and said he’d be back in ten minutes, but after three hours he never come out so I took off.

Maybe they wouldn’t let him out.

Maybe, said Missouri. But I’ll tell you a better one. I know one guy up there in Oregon. He woke up there in a boxcar and found everything gone: his food, his duffel bag, his wallet, his knife, his money — not to mention his partner of twelve years. He expected that, so he didn’t mind too much, but what really pissed him off was that his partner even stole his dog. Now that’s low.

Yeah, that is, Tyler agreed. So where are you headed today?

Oh, north. Generally north. Well, I’ve gone as far back as Cleveland by freight. I know how to do it. From Indiana, everywhere east is great because the cities are so close together you just need to go a few miles to escape the cops and jump the state line, but out here you got three or four hundred miles between towns, so you gotta hop a freight; you gotta be an expert so that they don’t get you.

Tyler rubbed his chin. — Who’s after you?

You heard about that Tent City down there in Arizona? That’s where they take all the homeless people and put ’em like in a prison camp. I don’t want to go there. Salt Lake’s building one, too. Everywhere you go now, they’re out to get you.

I think God’s been closing in since the get-go, Tyler said. I think pretty soon we’re not going to have anyplace left to run.

You’re one of them religious nuts, said Missouri complacently. I live and let live myself. But if you think prayin’ for me’s gonna do any good, why, then, you just send up a prayer for old Missouri. I ain’t never turned down anything free, even something I can’t see.

Have you run into a small thin black woman who—?

You already asked me that, sonny. I’m not interested. Hey, you got any tobacco on you?

You already asked me that, said Tyler.

No, I didn’t.

All right, so you didn’t. I was just checking on you.

On the embankment, the locomotives of the long, long train shrieked brassily past, and then the train began to slow.

Which way’s this one going? asked Tyler.

Check the first two numbers on the lead car. Didn’t you even know that? If they’re even, it’s going east or west. If they’re odd, it’s north or south, just like the highway. This one’s going north.

The train was going much more slowly now, and Tyler saw the square mouth of an open boxcar coming toward him. He slid his pack over his shoulder and got ready to jump into it.

They got a change off in Phoenix, Missouri said. Then it gets a local. They got a nice mission there in Phoenix where you can eat decent.

I’m not much into decency anymore, said Tyler.

Hey, you got any tobacco on you?

You never asked me that.

I hate boxcars, Missouri said. You got all this metal here that gets hot in the sun. Round about four or five in the afternoon, you get cooked.

Well, I like the view from a boxcar, said Tyler.

I always try to catch a grainer with an air compressor, Missouri said, trailing after him. But really I’m too old for this.

The train stopped. Tyler threw himself up onto his boxcar.

Can’t get inside them car carriers anymore, Missouri went on, looking up at him, in no hurry to board. — Used to be paradise. They put a couple gallons of gas in every tank, so on a cold night you could hop right in, turn on the heater and the radio, and later on tear the speakers out, rip off the cassette decks and sell everything… Where’s your spike?

Without waiting for an answer, he snatched up one of his own and pounded it into the groove beside the boxcar door, so that Tyler would not be lethally trapped by any sudden lurch.

Thank you, Tyler said.

I seen some Mexicans, the old man said, I seen how they died in a boxcar. They pounded their hands bloody, trying to get out, but nobody heard. Sun cooked ’em to death.

A loud hiss almost woke up the two sleeping tramps.

Getting ready to move, Missouri shouted. Or maybe he’s just testing his brakes…

You’d better grab your grainer, said Tyler, and the older man started and scurried down the track.

| 554 |

The brakes hissed again. Then the train began to move. His heart thrilled with joy. He was somewhere in northern California again. The hot strip of daylight, sand, gravel, trees, wires and skies unwound, anonymously strange. Every now and then he could glimpse a striped signal bar and a line of automobiles waiting for his train to finish occluding them. He felt a sense of borrowed power, that the train could interrupt so many people. It was only mid morning, but the temperature felt like it might breach a hundred. His skin was hot and sweaty. He dwelled inside the humming rattling roar of trainness. The train began to accelerate, and with dreamlike surprise he saw Sacramento: midtown, a signal tower, a brief ring of tunnel-darkness, graffiti; here stretched the yard he’d walked through on that first night; they were making up a long train at perpendiculars to him on the embankment behind; the train rattled in his teeth. Edging closer to the boxcar door, he gazed deliciously out as he flashed across the bridge with the river so lovely below and a guy on the bank fishing and then he was rushing through Coffee Camp; two cyclists waved from the pedestrian bridge — a whiff of steaming anise, and then Coffee Camp was gone…

Heat rose from the rails. He sped across dusty streets and gravel embankments, followed only by wires, going maybe forty miles an hour now, way too fast to jump. A smoldering burnt heat dried his nostrils every time he breathed.

Now the train really started going, flashing and flickering past man-shaped wicker-wire power towers, shaking him from side to side as if he were a single pea in a collander. It rushed him past a country road where he saw more backed-up traffic. He wondered if anyone could see him. The vibration massaged him within the base of his skull and in his back which was pressed against the dusty boxcar wall, and above all in his teeth like a speedball rush; and he understood the orgasms of the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen. Roaring and shaking past a long cornfield, he imagined fucking her right there on the floor of the boxcar with the vibration dissolving them into each other. He thought of his own dead Queen but no longer believed in her.

For hours, the parallelogram of sunlight in the open door kept swaying and pulsing, like his own brightly blank mind. He drank from his bag of water, which was still cool. A cropduster plane followed him, jetting what looked like flour which tumbled with slow gorgeousness. The train was slowing. He came to the doorway and gazed upon bright golden grass and fields of strange, blackened crops. On an impulse, having no idea where he was, he threw his backpack into space and then himself made the leap, falling exultantly to earth.

| 555 |

It was very hot. The flesh-rags of a dead cat lay stiff and flat in a ditch, reeking of mucilage. He walked for miles. Finally he came to a town, his lips cracking, and heard the blessed sound of a sprinkler. Across the road, behind a picket fence, a little blonde girl stood in the center of a green, green lawn, playing in the water. He waved, and she waved back. He was happy.

He walked on and on, looking for a store where he could buy a cold soda. Finally he stopped at a crossroads and drank from his water bag. The water was hotter than spit from having pressed up against his back.

Far away, he heard the whistle of a train. His soul glowed like a crackhead’s after that first hit of rock, and he began to run.

| 556 |

Look at that crazy tramp, a man at a gas station said. Look at him running. A hundred and five degrees. Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe we can watch him croak.

| 557 |

There was no train. He found a hobo’s abandoned camp, where sheets of cardboard made good resting and wooden planks spanned rocks and stumps to form benches, with castoff trousers tucked underneath. He took it over, picked blackberries, and slept. In the morning he was getting low on water when his train came…

| 558 |

Now, those two guys under the bridge, they’re good people, the old hobo said.

Groovy, said Tyler.

The whole deal is, we put one man over there to watch the gear, and another man here to collect from the citizens. I’m explainin’ all this for your own good, so you’d better be listening.

Tyler smiled sarcastically.

Now, you know what this is? said the old hobo.

A bedroll.

Wrong. It’s a prop. The more props you have, the more money you can make. The more shit you have hangin’ off, the more scratch you have. Get a bag on a stick like an oldtime bindlestiff. Get a hat. Put patches in your pants. You dig?

Tyler hesitated, sighed, and whispered: Props are for magic. Props keep me close to my Queen.

For by now he had a talisman, in the manner of his departed Queen, or for that matter like any whore brooding lovingly over her crack pipe. Just as the man called Sneakers, who begged on Steiner and Haight, bore beneath his baggy jacket in the nest made by the unzipped fly of his pants a plastic cup wedged in so secretly that it was as an organ of his body — this was his change-organ, his dime-collector; all he’d gotten that day was pennies, he said, and he always lied — so Tyler learned to attach himself to a rusty railroad spike. He never forgot what both old Missouri and that superhuman trainhop-per at Coffee Camp had told him: If the boxcar doors closed on you in the desert and the train sat for a week, you were sunk. Wedge it into the track, and you owned salvation. Then you couldn’t pull it out; you had to get another spike for next time; better just to carry a spare, which he’d never use because it was his good luck charm to comfort him as he sat with legs dangling, looking out at the tracks when he was certain of being unseen, listening to night-creaks and cracks and hissings, while the whole world rumbled like a boxcar door slamming shut. So many of the homeless men he met on the road owned knives, which gave them peace of mind instead of actual safety because they had to be concealed, and often not under clothes but deep inside duffel bags — how could they save anyone when quickly assailing death came? But let something become part of you, and you feel better — which is all that matters; you have to die anyway.

You got to snap out of it, son, said the old hobo, about whom there was something slow and kind which reminded him of the Queen. You got to wake up. Otherwise somebody’s gonna lift everything you have or even shank you in your fuckin’ sleep. You think it ain’t happened? You think you got a guardian angel? Oh, Jesus. I’m wasting my time.

All right, said Tyler.

I’m turning off my generosity.

Okay, said Tyler.

Then he was ashamed, and said: Listen, I’m sorry. I appreciate the advice. I was just dreaming about someone I love.

Forget it, the hobo said. They’re all just citizens. You got to keep your pride, or God’s gonna nail you.

Oh, I have my pride, all right.

You may have your pride, but you’re in a fuckin’ slump.

Tyler, understanding finally that the old hobo was trying desperately to reach out to him, said: Is it a friend you’re wanting? My name’s Henry. And I’m happy to be your friend.

He put out his hand.

Texas Pete, said the old hobo, shaking it. You know, uh, Henry, I was in Spokane last fall and this guy named John I was tryin’ to be partners with stole my frickin’ gear. He’s just a flat-out thief. His name’s John Hayden. He’s out in Seattle someplace suckin’ off someone else. He always expected me to buy the beer.

Sure, I’ll be partners with you if you want, said Tyler. I’ll buy drinks when I get money, and I’ll look after your bedroll.

Oh, they won’t go after this, Texas Pete said, kicking the bedroll, but they may go after my backpack.

The thing I need to tell you, Pete, is that I’m looking for a skinny little black gal named Africa. She may be dead, but I have to check every lead.

You’re better off with me, Henry. Forget the bitch. I’ll be there for you. I know how to be what you need. And we’ll ride the rails from A to Z. We’ll never come back here. We’ll never stay anywhere, until we get all the way to the sun.

Dan Smooth had read aloud from the Apocryphon of John how Cain, “whom generations of men call the sun,” was the sixth son of the lion-faced dragon Yaltabaoth. Did he believe it? Too late to ask. Was Cain the sun? Did Texas Pete have the Mark of Cain? Everything was all twisted up.

When we get to the sun, what do you want to do there? he asked.

Shit, fella, we gonna burn up! cackled Texas Pete, and then Tyler knew that they were brothers, lost and getting more lost, and he was happy.

But in the nighttime, when Texas Pete tried to unzip his fly, Tyler knew he had to get away. He ran and ran until he was all the way up in Butte, Montana, by the Christian mission in sight of the rusty railroad tracks. The preacher earbanged him and then gave him soggy twice-warmed casserole. He went out. In an open shop, a welder’s spark resembled the gloomy greyish sky malignantly magnified. The tawny ruin of the Berkeley open pit mine spread out behind and above everything. He gazed at sagebrush, crushed cans and bottles on the tracks where the brown Santa Fe and the blue Montana Rail Link cars were parked, bearing sad graffiti from years ago. He read it all; he wandered cuts, embankments, and other rusty tracks, but never saw anything more Queenish than the signature of Chuck from 1958.

| 559 |

He went north to Havre on the High Line; then west to Cut Bank where the Burlington Northern railroad bull who cited him crowed: This area is patrolled real heavy. You drifters ain’t got a chance. We even got a K-9 unit out here. Sniffin’ dogs. You hear me, bum? You ain’t got a chance! — When they kicked him off the yard, a security car drove very slowly at his heels. He turned back one last time to admire the beautiful orange locomotive with its blackish-green stripes, but then the security car honked its horn. He was hungry. That night, praying to his Queen, who always helped him, he hopped a long string of grainer cars and then a man came on a motor scooter, shining a light into every orifice. By some miracle or illusion or perseverance on the part of the hunted, the motor man didn’t see him, or else saw but pitied or did not care. No dogs barked. So he rode west and south again, in just the same way that half of the old bridge in West Sacramento could swing clockwise with remorseless rusty elegance, obliging as a whore’s thighs; and then a white paddleboat might toil into the gap as the bridge continued its now needless swing, silver rail ending sharply at the green river… His instinct now was not to seek stale clues, but only to elude all authority and recognition because his Mark of Cain now glowed inside his reeking clothes so that he continued ever more rapidly to go and on without knowing where he was going, knowing only that this crisis could not endure much longer; soon he’d adjust or break. Lucky enough to pass through Glacier International Park without getting parked for days on a snowy siding, he crouched shivering for a long cold night of swaying and rushing before he could set foot on the earth again, by which time he was in the BN yard in Spokane. Another train, a better train, was already building up steam. Gazing coldly through steel spectacles, the engineer, blue-clad, leaned forward so that one shoulder twisted, and the song of the locomotive increased in pitch. Tyler sprinted across the gravel of the freight yard and leaped inside a boxcar’s darkness, sliding forward on his belly to read the words CHICAGO’S MOST WANTED and TURD BIRD. Crumpled scraps of clothing lay trampled into the gravel like the grisly souvenirs of Cambodian killing fields. They began to crawl behind him as the boxcar shuddered. He would find the Queen of the great eternal angels, or else he would find Irene. Wasn’t he gaining power over everything? On the wall was written JESUS IS LORD, so he quickly scratched below those curse-words the infinity-sign of the Mark of Cain. He passed empty plastic water bottles, then a bleached cow or deer skull buried in the embankment, an oily sheet of squashed coveralls, crinkled snakes of bleached used toilet paper, and a crumpled flattened goose with a little fat still on the bones, sharp pebbles resembling silver — anthracite, perhaps. The train trembled and began to gain velocity. Leaning out, he could see the blue-denim’d arm of the engineer shaking cigarette ash out the window of the first locomotive. And now it seemed that he was doing precisely as he wished, proceeding from the smoking mountains to the snowy mountains, and he was not afraid. For he had begun to know the trains now, to understand how to touch the rivet-scales and rust on their metal skin. Sweet forgetfulness was blooming in his mind, like a summer’s path at Coffee Camp half overgrown with goldenflowered thistles.

But sometimes he still had Irene, for instance washing the dishes from a multicourse Korean meal she’d cooked in her mother’s house while the relatives sat around the table eating melon slices and sugarcoated sunflower seeds, trying to decide some recalcitrant teenager’s future, the cousin sitting tired from helping his parents all day, watching Korean television news about high school violence and auto accidents. The cousin had realized that all grls were hysterical. — I’m just not a good female handler, he said mournfully to his sister, who was getting ready for her week-long basketball tournament. The uncles, the tired old grocery store owners and dry cleaners, almost ready for retirement, cracked peanuts while the baby crawled upstairs, reaching for the dog while everybody laughed…

| 560 |

He remembered all the times he’d phoned and phoned but she never called back, the time above all when the three of them met for dinner and she’d never said a word to him, nor he to her. John prattled on. Irene answered, upholding her part of the conversation in a perfectly acceptable way, although Tyler, listening, thought that she seemed far less submissive than usual; her “I thinks” and “maybes” had been stricken out, so that she now spoke with the blunt authority of Koreans among equals; in fact, he sensed almost a contentious edge to her voice, a pulsing anger beneath the translucently banal membrane of her words. She was wearing a white sweater. Later, he’d remember its weave very well. Irene’s long inky hair occasionally entered his vision. He kept his gaze on her shoulder (she was sitting across from him); he couldn’t bear to look into her face. — What’s wrong? said John. Are you sick? — I’m OK, he said, looking into John’s face; at the same moment, Irene leaned forward, coming accidentally into view, so that he saw her grimace. Her pale face was so beautiful that he actually thought for a moment that he was going insane. He staggered to his feet and went to the men’s room, standing for a long time with his face in the sink, the cold water playing over his neck. He dried himself on his shirttails and went back. Amidst his terrifying love for Irene there now flowered a swift hatred, strengthening by the second; she could have at least greeted him when they met, or asked him how he was. He was bleeding inside from her cruelty. And then he reminded himself that he’d been the evil one, and should be grateful to her for not telling on him to John. The hatred disappeared. (John was saying something to him. He felt very lightheaded. He said: I’m sorry. My mind went blank.) He said to himself: Well, I can always go pick up a whore, and indeed, just that day on Ellis Street he’d met a stinking girl who lived in the Lincoln Hotel and who had begged him for money for epilepsy medicine, a favor he’d granted her; she’d said God bless you and kissed him with her reeking herpid lips; she’d said: If you ever need a woman, if you ever want somebody like me… and he didn’t want her but the fact that someone, at least, was willing to take him, made the pain recede. He tried to concentrate on the stinking woman with the herpid lips while they sat there in the restaurant. It took forever for the bill to come. He could feel Irene’s hatred now. There was no mistaking it. She despised him. She had avoided him and would go on doing so. She never wanted to see him again. He had sinned against her. She’d never forgive him. There was nothing he could do. After it was finally over, he and John punched each other’s shoulders half-heartedly, telling each other to be good, and then he looked up into the doorway where Irene, already turning away, but forcing herself to accomplish this one gesture for the sake of elementary politeness, fluttered her hand in a listless, resentful wave.

| 561 |

He went to San Francisco, and all the shelters he knew about were full. On Irene’s birthday he had to sleep in the street, in an alley south of Market. Two other men were already there, both of them black, and he asked them to help him. He was looking for a slender little black woman, maybe in overalls and suspenders.

Oh, it’s not so bad, one of them said. Lots of pussy around here. Trash can pussy, I call it.

That’s nice.

What’s your name?

Henry.

Henry, you a sharin’ type?

Sure.

Good. ’Cause if pussy come my way, if I got it, I share it.

Her name was Africa. And her shot-caller was a tall man named Justin. She…

Probably skipped all the way to Spokane by now, bro. Forget her. Keep your eye on reality. In this place we all gotta watch each other’s backs.

What’s your name?

Marcus.

So, Marcus, you telling me we have a few bad people around here?

When I first laid down on the streets, every night I wondered would I wake up alive. It goes farther back in your mind as the years go by, but it’s still there. I’ve had guns pulled on me, machetes pulled on me. But I used to teach martial arts, thanks to God’s grace. That man with the gun, I tripped him, slammed him into the wall. His buddy ran off. The store owner across the streets called the cops, and I’m glad to say the guy got five years in jail straight off…

Tyler sighed.

Don’t sweat it, bro, said the other man. Marcus always dwells on the bad side. Actually the best thing is the easiness, so to speak. You can leave your stuff, take a shower. A thief comes by, next guy will get him.

Does that mean you trust me? he asked in surprise.

Sure, we’re apprehensive about everyone at first, Henry. Don’t take it personal. But nobody gonna try to coerce you. Trust is building. We give you the rope to hang yourself.

A little more rope is all I need, he muttered, turning his face away from the garbage can.

| 562 |

He wanted to embrace life more and more. While his new brothers still snored, he buried his head in the garbage can, smelling John’s odor, the strong, sweaty scent he remembered so well from their boyhood. At John and Irene’s he’d once opened the laundry can with its dead frog smell. There’s been Irene’s panties with the precious golden dot of dried urine; he’d never forget that. Before the tramps woke, he reached deep into the hot, wet, stinking garbage with both hands and shoveled it over his face, feeling closer than ever to his adorable Queen.

| 563 |

The easiest course would have been to forget all about the Capp Street girls, but the next morning he walked down there in his heel-flapping shoes to satisfy himself one more time that nobody knew anything about the Queen, and his absurd hopes were burning like cigarette-ends in an ashtray. First he walked slowly past the fences and zigzag grillwork of Valencia Street where now a man stood holding a greasy cardboard sign which read HOMELESS — PLEASE HELP ME and where long ago Tyler used to meet the false Irene, who’d always stuck her abscessed tongue in his mouth, then mumbled: Hey, can you gimme five dollars? Just five. Or ten would be okay, ’cause then I could really really truly get well for a couple hours… — and her diseased body had been red and white just like one of these tacqueria-fronts. Here he was, gaping at a row of white-painted grilles between Fourteenth and Fifteenth, with the low whitish skyscrapers of the inner Mission District to remind him that things might well endure for a time. He hesitated, however, to wander far from his obligations. Perhaps he had never belonged here. He yearned to be safely back at Coffee Camp, or, better still, on a boxcar on a long, long train hitched to at least three or four locomotives so that he knew he was going somewhere far away because that was how you did an extended trace. But he ought to take advantage of his stay in San Francisco to get information for the details description sheet he now kept inside his cranium. At Capp and Seventeenth, the very intellectual-looking black prostitute who wore spectacles at first refused to even return his greeting since by his appearance and odor he probably possesed insufficient financial means to fulfill her expectations of life, but when he humbled himself, when he implored her, when asked after the old Queen, whom she’d never met, she relented a little and said: I don’t know about that. But Strawberry used to know her. Strawberry passed away. I found her, and it was pretty icky. The cops came and the EMT came and I told ’em to please cover her face but they couldn’t do anything till the coroner came.

(I feel a little nervous, Strawberry had said to the two men as they held the door for her, but you gotta do what you gotta do.)

And suddenly Tyler turned away in a revulsion of frustration and rage against that sinister world he used to know well. He couldn’t believe that the concrete hereabouts even held the impressions of his Queen’s darling footprints. He longed now for light and space, where his exalted Queen might perhaps be flying overhead.

| 564 |

Daringly he breached the eastern border of the Tenderloin (which the Queen’s girls always used to call the other side of the mountain) and came into the financial district, John’s kingdom, where the phony welcomingness of light fixtures in galleries, the groanings of cable cars, the promenading tourists, the slamming of car doors as passengers in a hurry ran away from stalled traffic, their high heels emphatically clicking, infected him with vindictive shame. Everybody literally turned up his nose at Henry Tyler! Just as booted feet sometimes twitch uselessly, scratching one another’s unscratchable itch, so he scratched together Queen and Irene in his head, and experienced only the same old disaster. He approached the old lady whose fur collar was twice the size of her head, and she departed him in disgust, as did the young black girl who was trying to be cool but who was obviously embarrassed by her own ghetto blaster. Another cable car passed by, the driver jazzily jangling his bell.

I just wanna show you this place, a father was explaining to his two sons, one of whom cast scared eyes on Tyler. The cable car’s bell jingled, its festiveness as brassy and fake as the bright warm diamonds of lamplight across the street.

Tyler thought to himself: I should really have it out with John. I should really…

| 565 |

On one of the columns of the Pacific Stock Exchange, a bas-relief girl with granite hair turned her head against the snow, diagonally bisected by shadow while with a superhuman lack of awkwardness she gazed across the street at the floral nipples and lion-heads which studded the facade of the eleven-storey building occupied in part by Radio Shack; around the corner (Pine and Sansome) rose a stubby brick building of about the same height overtopped by an immense white tower whose flag streamed in the cold sky, shrunk by distance to the slenderness of ribbon, a scarlet ribbon. Just as the skyscraper overshadowed the granite woman, so she in turn dwarfed the kiosk a mere twenty feet high on one of whose curving sides a sultry, Italian-looking model with rouged and parted lips gazed straight at the steps, all the more fiery by contrast with her icy-blue halter-top above which the necessary hint of cleavage began; the advertisement (for what, lurking Tyler couldn’t see) had frozen her in the act of cocking her hip, which had a black leather belt-pouch slung on it. Perhaps the granite woman was actually looking down at her; that must have been the reason her turned head was pressed so uncomfortably against the stone she was made of. The model, however, did not seem to perceive her elder sister. Flushed and ready, she gazed vaguely into space. Amidst the river of human beings now approaching on Sansome Street came John in a pinstripe shirt. He barely made it up to the model’s knees, which of course remained hopelessly far beneath the soles of the granite woman’s feet. Then Celia in her sunglasses and high heels came hurrying up the sidewalk, holding an iced latte. Neither of them looked up at the Queen of Mammon. They clasped arms around each other’s shoulders. John needed her to try on a new pair of shoes. After they departed, a swarthy pigeon landed and kissed the specks of filth at the granite woman’s feet.

Four o’clock, and the downtown streets were stricken with a bad case of the shadows as John’s colleague and rival, Roland, bought a newspaper and stood on the corner with his bulging attache case, waiting for his wife to pick him up and drive him to Sutter and Kearney. (John for his part used to like to have Irene drive up California Street when she was chauffeuring him home from the office. The Pacific Bank’s golden letters passed on his left, then the obsidian tower of Great Western Bank, and at Montgomery the trolleytrack-grooved street shot up into the sun where a summit of flags and domes awaited him.) Advancing on him, Roland saw a black man in a black skull cap who was licking a cigarette, his sign saying HELP IF YOU CHOOSE. Roland looked away.

Tyler remained. A rich man approached. Tyler extended his hand.

Let’s see if I have more than three cents, sighed Mr. Rapp, dropping three shiny copper pennies into the panhandler’s palm. — Let’s see. Yup. You caught me at a good time. Here’s a quarter.

Thank you, bro, said the panhandler gravely, and Mr. Rapp felt strangely pleased that he was someone’s brother. The top of his head gleamed in the autumn sun as he crossed Grant Street, swinging his briefcase of Italian leather.

| 566 |

Tyler wanted to go to City Lights. He believed that he could remember every book he’d ever seen there. When Allen Ginsberg died, in April 1997, Tyler had paged through a glorious monograph on Soviet photography, compiled by Margarita Tupitsyo, he was pretty sure. He always used to drive there back in those days, penetrating the Broadway tunnel, which was yellow, tiled, curvy and sometimes empty; its light-strings had reminded him of the vertebrae of a dead snake. The Queen had done her business in that tunnel sometimes. One he’d picked her up there and given her a ride someplace in his car, maybe to one of those cafes just north of City Lights where the capuccinos in their snow-white cups were not just foamy but full-bodied, the foam itself stiff and striped, gilded and brown, like crème brûlée. He remembered the smell of cigarettes and the sound of Italian speech. But no; that hadn’t been the Queen he’d been with there, but the false Irene. And since the false Irene had been involved, maybe it actually hadn’t been very much fun. Where had he driven the Queen? It couldn’t have been to City Lights; he’d never seen her reading any book except the Bible. It had always been difficult to find a parking place around City Lights. At least he didn’t have that problem anymore. He started to walk up Columbus Avenue but by the time he got to City Lights he realized that he was too ashamed of his own stench to go inside.

| 567 |

Joining the long line of human beings in sweaters, coats, caps and boots who waited for a meal at Glide Memorial, he remembered very well how many times he’d driven by them in the old days when he had a car and a job and was following some unfaithful banker through the Tenderloin or was going to meet Irene. He remembered that dinner with Irene so long ago now at the Kabuki Cho restaurant with its sashimi dashboard clocks. — Please don’t tell any of this to John, she’d said. — The man in the yellow GLIDE STAFF windbreaker ignored everyone until four, when he suddenly began taking meal tickets, chatting on a walkie-talkie while the first bunch went through. Majestically, he held up his hand to halt the line. Tyler was still far away, about two-thirds of the way down. He felt very hungry. The staff man was pawing through a trash can with one gloved hand. Then he yawned and turned away from the homeless ones, gazing up at skyscrapers and signs with a disdain entirely befitting the representative of a despotic theocracy. Tyler shifted his aching feet and blew on his hands. A cigarette stub in a scowling mouth shot past. He remembered one day when the Queen in her black high-heeled boots was dancing to the radio while the tall man sat with his head in his hands.

Now the man in yellow was accepting the second batch of tickets. They moved quickly and happily past him, heading for the entrance beneath the blue awning. One unauthorized being tried to creep in, but the man in yellow extended a long black gloved finger and he tumbled back to his place. Everyone halted at the next silent command, waiting with their hands on their hips or folded behind their backs or hidden in their pockets. Tyler felt very tired now.

The Queen walked by swinging her purse and singing. No, it wasn’t she; it wasn’t she.

| 568 |

One more time and one more time he strolled the Tenderloin and actually found Strawberry, who wasn’t dead at all. He remembered her out in front of the Wonderbar, her eyes wild and glassy as she leaned against the door. Now her hair was greyer, that was all. Maybe nobody ever died. Maybe he’d find Irene, or his dearest and most adorable little Queen, the Queen of his love, the keeper of his spirit, his tender Queen.

Don’t you remember me? he said.

What the fuck? Oh, yeah. You’re the Queen’s trick. About time Maj got up off her ass and used it for something… Oh, that’s right. Maj is gone. It’s Domino now…

Strawberry, you’ve got something in your hair.

Well, why don’t you touch me? You afraid to touch me? Whatcha afraid for? I fuck everybody.

Okay, honey, he said. See, it’s chewing gum.

Honey, I hate to say this but you got some miles on your tires. Well, what the heck. You look like a nice date. Probably only do it for a couple of minutes…

Thanks.

Well, so what’s the story? said Strawberry. You want some company or what?

Uh…

Then her manner became as tight as the pussy of the skeletal whore whose face, like Beatrice’s, had been destroyed in an automobile accident, and she said to him: No hard feelings, Henry, but I need to make a little money out here. You mind moving away from me?

| 569 |

It was foggy in John’s neighborhood, with a white-chocolate fog that at ten o’clock in the morning persisted like a hangover. He strolled up to the front door, read on the nameplate the words J & I TYLER and found no courage, or perhaps simply no inclination, to ring the bell. Slowly he turned the corner. Half an hour later he was sitting in one of the coffee shops which had metastasized all over Union Street; and he sat among the backpacked, baseball-capped persons of leisure who, heads still glistening from the shower, read the newspaper: the President had declared tobacco an addictive drug. The FBI had found traces of explosive in a piece of the jet which had fallen into the sea. A woman of unknown name and address had been found dead on Capp Street. New cars were available for NO GIMMICKS — NO HASSLES.

The two women at the adjoining table glared at him, wrinkling their noses and fanning the air. Enraged, humiliated, he tried to stare them down. He’d truly had no ill intentions! But that didn’t matter. He lived, so he stank. Presently the manager came and said: Sir, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave. You’re disturbing the other patrons.

Tyler leaned toward his enemies and whispered: My body’s made of white sugar. That’s why I don’t take showers. C’mon, sweethearts, can I take a bath in your cookie jar?

| 570 |

He hopped a freight to Coffee Camp and then went to Loaves and Fishes to get his blue ticket for a free lunch. Then he got seconds. Drunks were sneering and scratching themselves beneath the arms. Nobody had heard of the Queen. No one knew the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen. He picked little grapes like blue ballbearings which left his sweaty fingers purple-black almost like railroad grime. Sitting high above the river on a log so rotten that he could scratch the word IRENE into it with his fingernail, he wondered whether this final most extended trace of his private eye career might not prove to be more than the waste that John would have thought it, because even if he could never find the Queen again, if he could at least prove her perpetual nonexistence then he would at least have destroyed one more lie in this world. He feared nothing now except a death of extended physical pain. He felt stronger and more honest than he’d ever been. Maybe he’d finally gotten to the point of living life with a flaming joy like a yellow California Northern train sliding through the yellow hills, not afraid of any risk (because anyway, no matter what you do, death will find you out), just doing whatever he wanted to do and hoping for the best. — Look at that bum, said the trackman. Yep, he thinks he’s a hundred-car train! — Naw, he’s just goin’ to south Sacramento, laughed the engineer. Just switchin’. —The engineer was wrong. Tyler hopped a freight to Bakersfield, and another to Barstow via Los Angeles. Then he kept going, his train blowing sadness along the horizon in a lovely roaring wind which must be blowing white ripples upstream back at Coffee Camp which had become his home as much as the false Irene had once become the dead Irene. Soon it would be autumn there. The grass would be getting yellow, and spiny leaves would blow down his neck; there’d be star thistles in charge of the world, but not now because he was traveling southward into summer on a train as silvery as the river seen between grape leaves. Lonely, lost, hot and thirsty, he hoboed on his way increasingly free from preconceived intentions. He was freer every day. He needed nothing except water and a few excuses. Mosquitoes crawled under his hatbrim and on his sweaty cheeks. A slam, then a deeply reverberating squeak sent him farther outward into the world, as the huge, shiny wheel-disks slowly began rotating, their shining rims ready to hew off his leg if he were careless. On his boxcar someone had written in blue paint: TO LIVE ALONE IS TO DIE ALIVE. Sometimes he slept near unmoving trains, still trains, striped pale and grey in the darkness. In the morning he always shook his shoes out in case scorpions had crawled inside. Before he knew it, he was almost in Mexico…

| 571 |

We’re about to get a burst of high winds, Waldo said, looking at his watch. He wore nothing but shoes, underpants and a baseball cap. — Over there, he said, that just looks like a burned-out bus, but that’s actually my command post, where I watch for all the maurauders. All the electronic things we can’t talk about, the things that go whirly-whirly and that talk to you, those are the things that are there.

Tyler had been through this patch of desert six months ago, so he remembered the vans, the broken down truck, the missile nosecone, the mattresses and sofas all monumental against the flatness like some dry Mexican necropolis of flowers and spindly gravestones, their neighbors being pyrites and granite and sedimentery rock. Waldo definitely possessed more couches and shoes and everything now. Especially he owned more vehicular hulks. Soon the Park Service would be bound to notice, and then Waldo would lose everything. Waldo, who was autistic, sweet, longhaired, gray bearded, skinny and old, would then wilt and maybe even die. On the other hand, maybe Waldo would just die right here before anything else happened. He’d been burglarized a week ago. He would be as easy to kill as Irene’s child.

The sun heated a broken sink and a rusty cylindrical tank all the way to hurtfulness. Waldo said: When it gets around a hundred twenty-five or so, when it gets iffy, you got to follow the shade around, cancel any patrols that are necessary. Take special options, with doughnuts and flying saucers in radiators, and drink lots of ice water, and no unnecessary movement.

Waldo splashed ice water over himself. He did not offer Tyler any. He never offered any guest a drink cold or otherwise. That was his way. He was not selfish, only different.

Where do you get that ice from? asked Tyler.

I get those who have transpo or whatever, Waldo said. I put up signs and signals, and they keep watch on me.

Then that frail, gentle man turned away, gazing toward the Salton Sea, which was not visible from here, his thought-radiations perhaps travelling as far as Bombay Beach, which would appear less deserted than it actually was once night came — a few streetlights came on, and two or three trailer- or house-lights shone on every block, struggling with electric automatism against the smell of the Salton Sea and all the dry, broken things. Or who knew? Maybe Waldo’s thoughts were already all the way to Mars.

Waldo, Tyler asked him earnestly, recalling what the wise tramp had said, have you ever learned anything from the stars?

Oh, we beam in. We maintain transmission.

Who’s we?

Oh, yeah, we got a badger out there. He’s a wild one, but we get along fine even though base regs say absolutely no pets or furry critters.

Well, I want to screen out everything but pure transmissions, Tyler said. Can you make me a bullshit detector?

Let’s take this concept here, Waldo replied thoughtfully, raising a propeller from the dirt. I use it to track wind speed against time factor. This is all multi-purpose. This might be the building block. Got all kinds of fans, he added with satisfaction. If it’s ugly, paint it. If it doesn’t work, make it spin.

Well, Tyler asked, can I buy it from you? There’s too much bullshit in this world. I need to know where it is.

Couldn’t sell it myself, said Waldo. It’s one of the project groups. One of the off-budget type groups.

And I’d like an anti-loneliness device, said Tyler.

Waldo spun a propeller, thinking deeply. — Well, it sounds simple but that’s actually as deep and wide as an aircraft carrier.

How much would it cost me?

I’d probably give you a variety of options, and then you can dial in. I’m rated for microprocessors and basic machine language.

Here’s five dollars, said Tyler. Maybe you could give me a prototype next time I come through.

Waldo took the money and stared at it. Then he put it in his shirt pocket. Flies crawled on the underside of his cap.

Could I see your command post?

Yeah, all right, said Waldo, hopping on his bicycle and slowly pedaling, brown like a Missouri Pacific boxcar and almost naked, with a load of bottled juice in his saddle-baskets. Tyler walked behind, overseen by the low blue mountains with their tan ridge of boulders, and then the hot wind rattling sheet metal against the van with boarded up windows. That most infallible of all guardians, the nosecone, never blinked.

On the edge of a low wash lay a dead bus whose windows were blacked out by more boards, in regulation style, and whose skin had been painted a sort of crude camouflage. — It’s been here the longest time, Waldo boasted, but you don’t see it. Now this just looks like a trailer, but this is actually a deployment of the Marine Corps group. Any recono pod in strange places, we monitor that. We see what drug deals and what activities he’s committing and where he’s fencing his goods.

On the inside of the rusty door was handwritten: EMERGENCY FIRE EXIT. On the walls: TRUE LOVE and DANGER — RESTRICTED.

Waldo explained: We threw out the useless love-sex books and replaced ’em with technical books you can use, books on electronic circuits and how-to books…

The interior of the van was almost cool. On the counter lay a packet of breakfast powder, circuit boards, rusty gears, a meat thermometer, and alertness aid tablets. On the floor was a cooler full of ice.

This is part of our conceptual dream group where we lay down the hardware like our gear rotor, said Waldo. We cover the whole range.

He raised a kaleidoscope and said: This is called our cold fusion power. Aim it right at this reflector; that thing’ll give you an eye burn.

On the counter Tyler saw a palm-sized metal disk which Waldo had painted beautifully green, white and flesh-pink, all pastel-blended. — What is it? he said.

They got some good drugs, they think they’re gonna fly that. That used to be one of our saucers, a remotely powered three-man toroidal anti-magnetic jewel lift system. They developed that back in the early 40s and 50s, during the Philadelphia Experiment. Me, I don’t believe in none of that stuff. I believe in the theoretical technology.

All right, said Tyler. If you have the technology to do that, and even make me an anti-loneliness device, maybe you can help me with a project that will make the anti-loneliness device obsolete. See, I want to find my Queen even though it’s no use because she’s dead.

Lots of queens out there.

I mean the Queen of the Whores.

Well, said Waldo, hitching up his underpants, so what you’re requisitioning is a way to help you track a whore type critter. Well, we can build kites for faggots and all them critters, but it’s just an image that’ll dance around; it’s just a piece of plastic. Well, it works really well if you want to piss off your old lady…

| 572 |

In Niland, California, which as the crow flies was not very far from where Waldo lived, but if a man walked straight it would be a pretty hot and lethal march, there was a cafe whose long wood-veneer counter had been worn into dark brown spots in front of each stool. Stuffed fish, birds and deer-heads hung on the walls from the long gone days before the Salton Sea turned poison. The proprieter, who was eighty-eight years old, said: It’s a shame, though, what they’ve done to the Salton Sea. Hurts the whole Imperial Valley. Probably cost us a hundred and fifty thousand a year in sales.

Tyler nodded wearily, drinking his root beer float, and the waitress came and added more root beer for free. The glass was huge and there was about a quarter-pint of vanilla ice cream in there, so cold and good that for the first time since the sun had come out he felt that he could think.

When I come here in 1956, this was winter tomato country, the proprieter was saying. In ’65 they took the duty off at the border. Then we couldn’t compete against the Mexican tomatoes. That just killed our tomato growers.

Tyler said: Did you ever see a skinny little black woman named Africa? I expect she’s long dead now.

Doesn’t ring a bell, the proprieter said. But there’s so many transients at Slab City up the road, just about a three-mile piece…

You look pretty hard up, the waitress whispered. Don’t worry about that float. I’ll charge it to me.

Thanks, he said.

What’s that? said the proprieter, cupping his ear.

Oh, shut up, the waitress said. She turned back to Tyler and said to him: You gonna stay at Slab City? she said.

That depends, ma’am, he said.

(The proprieter, deaf and bored, had gone back to reading his newspaper.)

My parents brought me out there from when I was in fourth grade until I was fourteen years old and got a boyfriend and could get away from it, she said.

Doesn’t sound as if you enjoyed it too much.

In the winter you’d wake up with frozen feet. In the summer those slabs would be scorching. And scorpions and ants and everything. Strange, strange people. I hated every minute of it.

On the refrigerator case, near the row of decals of a longtime Ducks Unlimited donor, hung a handwritten sign in English and Spanish which read: I WOULD LIKE TO BUY A BOX OF FLAME GRAPES.

Boy, it’s slow, the waitress said. The day goes so slow when you just sit. You want a refill?

That would be mighty kind, he said. He hunched himself smaller, hoping that he did not stink too much.

Tyler went into the men’s room and filled up his water bag. The advertisement on the vending machine for adult novelties read: IF SHE IS A MOANER THIS WILL MAKE HER A SCREAMER. IF SHE IS A SCREAMER THIS WILL GET YOU ARRESTED. When the waitress wasn’t looking, he paid for his root beer float, left a tip and went out. He still had twenty-two dollars in his pocket.

In the vast gravel lot, a painted sign said: SALVATION MOUNTAIN 3 MI.

He turned down that road and started walking away from Niland, where this store was closed and that store was boarded up and the Mexican restaurant closed at two in the afternoon, and every now and then one saw a notice to buy a great business opportunity — not that Niland didn’t still have some life left: just ask the old café proprieter and the waitress, who were still hanging on… It was now nine in the morning and very hot. A train oozed slowly by, bearing immense blue Hanjin crates. He wondered what might be inside. Whatever it was, it must not be for him. Swallowing dust, he walked on, knowing that somewhere near the horizon his destiny might be dryly slithering down the wide paths and roads of Slab City. Not a single car passed him on his trudge. The Salton Sea stewed and stank unseen at his back. Ahead lay the dusty-blue Chocolate Mountains; and after a weary two miles or so he began to see Salvation Mountain gleaming whitely like a bunch of melted candle-wax. The landscape in which it stood (in company with its tamarisk tree and its two trucks which said REPENT) could have been Hebrew, but the mountain itself resembled an aquatic amusement park, because its bulk of desert dirt had been painted in white and blue streaks to resemble water. The mountain itself, with all its colored slogans bulging like breasts, was composed of dirt, hay bales, and colored latex paint which felt smooth and cool under his hand. On the mountain’s chest, a scarlet heart, tricked out in white adobe letters, said to him: JESUS, I’M A SINNER. COME UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART. He ascended to the summit-cross, and in place of inspiration discovered more dogged artifice, where a long dry ridge marked the watermark of a lake which had vanished four centuries before, and hay bales and paint cans were discreetly laid, ready for the next good work. Irene would have loved it here. She’d been a good Christian girl. That was why Tyler respected the preacher’s mad sincerity. He had started building back in 1984, but after three years the Mountain collapsed, so he started all over again. Tyler stood there for a while, alone on the hot flat sand below Salvation Mountain except for one cicada which produced the only sound. He thought: If only I could build a mountain for her, or a… — But he could not decide what he wanted to build.

| 573 |

Past Salvation Mountain the road went on toward the Chocolate Range, but before it had gone very far there was another sign which said SLAB CITY — WELCOME. Turning right, he entered a grid of dirt streets, desert scrub in between. Past the rusty red bus you had to go deeper into that maze of wide empty roads in the low brush, with trailers lurking between on the half-broken low concrete flatforms, trailers with tarps, singles with mailboxes, until you came to a trailer with a sticker that said AWOL, and on the slab beside it, under a tree-shaded tarp, an old man sat at a manual typewriter which didn’t work, thinking about composing a letter. His white poodle lay beside him, guarding the cartridge box and other gear against death as the old man explained to Tyler:

Now the left side over there, they call that Poverty Flat. On the right, that’s called High Rent Area. Actually, the names are reversed, just to keep people amused. In the High Rent Area, people live kind of hand to mouth.

We got a club in here called the Slab City Singles. I founded it fifteen years ago and I’ve been coming every year for fourteen years, ever since I lost my wife. But Slab City itself has been around much longer than that. Back in World War II, General Patton had these kind of camps all over the desert. After they moved out, the Navy moved in and then the Marines took over. That slab over there, that was a hospital. Then they shut the whole thing down and sold it. My slab, that was the officers’ latrine. And this lot here, that’s the parade ground.

(One of the old man’s thermometers said 105° and the other said 120°.)

We still don’t have too many rules, the old man said. With all that nice shade and everything, I can’t stop others from moving in. Anyone can drive in and park. This is America. That guy over there, he’s dying to move in.

Tyler inquired: Have you seen a skinny little black lady named Africa? I wanted to live and die with her.

They don’t allow a man and a woman not married to live in the same rig, but we talked it over and decided to let ’em. And we got eight of ’em now, married couples, and we set up an auxilliary.

I get it, said Tyler.

This little gal and I, we play trionomoes, said the old man. This little gal here, she weighs only sixty-five pounds. And she used to drive a big truck! he said proudly.

Well, the little gal said (she was tattooed with the word MOTHER), I’d rather be where it’s cooler. I’d rather be in Oakdale where I come from. I used to have a home. I had to buy this trailer because of my health. I’ve been here for four years. I’m stuck here this summer because my motor home needs work and I can’t afford it.

Clearing his throat, Tyler said: Or have you seen a pregnant Korean lady named Irene?

| 574 |

The tracked and trodden sand on either side of the trestle bridge at Coffee Camp might not have been so different from the sand of Slab City, but in Slab City there was more sand and less of everything else, long wide dazzling avenues of sand down which no one passed, so that he recalled a typical oddball comment uttered by Waldo, who’d heard of Slab City even through his ringing autism, though he’d never been there, and said to Tyler: They don’t move around in the daytime, man. Just like vampires. — Already the white shimmer of Salvation Mountain like cake icing or wax running down the ridge lay out of sight because Salvation Mountain was actually not very high and at Slab City the hot sandy plain had begun a downward slope which steepened a little near the canal’s edge where Slab City gave way to the Drops, or as some called it, the outback, where the true squatters lived. The place felt wild and strange to him.

Past the cross by an immense flat slab, past the perimeter of tires laid down upon the sand in a long strange black line of symbolic menace, he swung round one camp’s snarling dogs, and at the next camp under some shade-trees he met an angry man.

How long have you been out here? said Tyler.

Shoot, said the angry man in disgust. We’re havin’ a hell of a time out here, on account of some bad people. I was attacked by two persons with clubs, and I defended myself with a baseball bat. They attempted to murder me. One woman out there, she instigated the whole thing. They knocked me unconscious. They beat my head in. I get up, defend myself, police show up, and my attackers tell the police I’m just some drunken maniac. The D.A. takes their side of it. And then the bureaucrats take us down. Since it never goes to trial, I never get my say. They make me come down to court, and then they keep changing the court dates. Once I spent the whole day in court so they could tell me in thirty seconds to come back on another day, and while I was there I had to keep my dog chained up out here all day, and because he wasn’t used to being chained up, he strangled to death. I feel I’m beat down.

I’m his only source of income, his mother said. I get my widow’s pension. It’s hard for me to maintain. I promised I’d help him out for four or five months. And every time we go to court, I have to worry about gasoline, gasoline. The trip to court and back costs about fifteen dollars.

Where is all them court papers, Mom? said the angry man.

He spread them out on the hood of one of his dead cars and began to reread them obsessively. Then he looked up at Tyler and said: My plan was to be out of here before the summer hit.

How long have you been here? said Tyler.

Last time we went to court in the truck, his mother said. An officer pulled us over for a cracked windshield and Idaho plates. So they slapped that fine on top of that.

It’s like they’re keepin’ us broke, the angry man said.

How did you end up here? said Tyler.

Well, we came here originally around Thanksgiving, the old mother said. We left twice. Somebody told me about Slab City, and there are some good things about this place, but I hope we get out of here before it gets too hot. I’m afraid this heat will kill me. Put a wet towel on me, is the only thing that will keep me cool. And then this happens, with those people trying to murder my son.

What made you pick the Drops over the slabs? asked Tyler.

Privacy, the man said. And on the slabs, it’s hard to find any trees to live under. Them snowbirds are already in the good spots.

Hey, said Tyler urgently. Have you seen a little black gal who, uh—

By the mother’s trailer lurked a skinny woman who watched Tyler with a sort of weary gingerliness. Finally, as the angry man returned to his court papers, Tyler strolled over to her and asked her how she was.

The skinny girl looked shyly down. — What we’re doin’ is mopin’ around. I used to have an apple ranch…

How long’s it been for you? he said.

I been here about fourteen months now. My boyfriend brought me here but then he took off on me. He’d already got us kicked out of the place we’d stayed in town, this condemned apartment run by a black con artist. When my boyfriend took off, he ripped off the best of my food stamps, ninety goddamn dollars’ worth.

Yeah, they keep on kickin’ you in the teeth when you’re down, the angry man said, anxious to resume talking about himself. He showed Tyler a nunchuck that his would-be murderers had left — two pieces of steel pipe connected by a chain.

Well, said Tyler to the skinny woman, how about you? Have you ever met a black woman named Africa who—

She shook her head. — I don’t guess I got any enemies.

I just hope you can get things together, the angry man’s mother said to her very gently.

Tyler cleared his throat and said: If I gave you five dollars could you tell me if you ever saw Africa?

Pretty much out here there’s no economy, said the angry man. I buy junk cars and sell parts. I want a good pickup, just a good pickup. I used to be a mechanic, but ain’t no work around here anyway. I’m in a pit of lions, armed with a flyswatter.

My best friend died in my arms, the skinny woman went on in a whisper. My boyfriend shot her in the back in our house, right through the back door. I carried her off next door and she wanted me to hold her. I still have some bad dreams…

And then what happened? said Tyler.

They went to shoot my boyfriend, I think, and the gun misfired and then they arrested him.

Things happen all the same though, the angry man’s mother said wisely.

I have a headache, said the skinny woman.

What’s for dinner? said the angry man to himself. Got some hamburger, I think. Don’t know how the cheese will hold up. Soon it’ll be cooler.

Well, said Tyler starting to feel oppressed, maybe I’ll move on. What are you folks going to do now?

Relax during the night, the angry man said. Enjoy the coolness and get the labor stuff done. I’m tryin’ to get this swamp cooler to work…

Tyler peeled off his last twenty and gave it to the mother. — Maybe this’ll buy you enough gas to get your son to court and back.

The angry man looked at him with big owl eyes and said: I could sure use some help, too.

Tyler sighed.

The angry man sat there for a while and then said hopelessly: Guess I’ll go into Mom’s trailer and try to swat off all the flies.

| 575 |

As for Tyler, he continued on his extended trace. Ten minutes’ footwork further out into the Drops he met a thin, bespectacled, beatific man with scraggly long hair who walked steadily in the hundred and fifteen degree heat, swinging his black-greased hands, his bare torso tanned almost to negritude.

Everybody’s friendly out here, he said. Everybody works together. Even when the snowbirds come in, we are not like a big city. We don’t get involved in other people’s business. I leave my place unlocked. And if you don’t cause trouble, you don’t get trouble. You don’t have to worry about someone come up the road behind you and shoot…

Tyler nodded.

I been workin’, the man said. I do mechanic work. Sometimes the guys at the shop invite me inside where it’s cool, but I always say no. You get into air conditioning and then when you come out you gonna have a heat stroke. Anybody could be walkin’ out here and it could hit you all at once.

Yeah, it feels pretty warm, said Tyler.

Name’s Clyde.

Henry.

You find you a spot out here, you can make it. But if you don’t got tough skin, you ain’t gonna make it. I been here seven years.

You must get lots of thinking done around here, said Tyler.

Yep. I think about my past, and about my dead wife and about how to make a nickel; I’m always hustlin’…

I think pretty about much the same, Tyler admitted.

Clyde gave him a loving gaze. I can see that you do, he said.

I’m looking for someone, Tyler began hopelessly, a black lady, well, a small, slender black gal who…

I hope you find her, said Clyde.

You think she could be living here?

You got some women that live by theirselves, and one black guy, but no black gals that I know of.

How about past the Drops?

You can go nine miles down that road and then it cuts off to the right and then it goes on to Calpatria, but half a mile down from here the people stop. There’s not over seventy of us, including Slab city and all the kids…

And what about the other way?

Drop Eleven is the last, said Clyde, sincerely sorry for him, and at that moment Tyler felt that the man’s kindness was as immense as the scarlet heart on the white breast of Salvation Mountain.

What’s her name? said Clyde. The name of the gal you’re tryin’ to find.

Oh, he mumbled, Africa was her name, but she… Maybe now the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen would be good enough, because Africa must be dead.

Well, why don’t you sleep on it, said Clyde. If you was to ask your homeless, what does it take to get what you need, I bet they’ll all answer, an argument and a wait. But here, I could go to anyplace here and get me a ride, food and a cold drink. And it’s not so hard to get you a nickel or two. We haul scrap iron to get by.

Now the hot trees and trailers glowed in the sand as the sun began to set. A tire stood on end, now jet black like its own shadow, everything private and set back in the trees. A few silhouettes crept silently out on the sand. He knew that when morning came, scorching and dry, there’d be nobody.

Later he sat out by Salvation Mountain, with the Milky Way spread out as rich as a stain upon the sky; and stars, stars, stars! Salvation Mountain was like a groundsloth, a hunkered down elephant or maybe a snail barely poking its head out of its shell, all whitish and jigsawed in the night.

| 576 |

A train, dark against the darkness, barely discernible, comprised a mere shifting of the night which hissed and clicked to itself.

| 577 |

He drifted through Coffee Camp one night in midsummer and there were no campfires, the river silver and still, with the trestle bridge’s reflection floating on it like a fallen ladder, barely trembling, as if disturbed a little by the faint harsh voices. Across the river, a spear of city light exposed an immense bat which then vanished back into its element. The next day he walked up and down the river, but the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen was long gone. He was getting so bored with disappearances.

| 578 |

I bear the Mark of Cain, he said wearily to the next missionary.

You do not, the missionary replied. You are a white man. You are no Negro. I quote to you from Brigham Young, the second prophet of my church: Cain slew his brother, and the Lord put a mark on him, which is a flat nose and black skin.

My Queen was black, said Tyler. Therefore, so am I.

You can’t be Negro just by wishing it, man!

Oh, yes I can.

| 579 |

Up above the freeway where the razor-wire was, they’d cut a hole in the fence with their wirecutters. The railroad or the city had patched that one up, so they’d cut another hole. That was how life worked.

Got change for a five? a woman said.

Nope, said Tyler. Where are you headed?

I don’t answer any questions, the woman snarled. That rule comes from moi.

Oh, well, then I won’t answer any questions, either, said Tyler. How’s that for a deal?

The woman whispered into her boyfriend’s ear, who said to Tyler: I oughta gut you.

A deal’s a deal, said Tyler serenely.

The couple glared at him. Then they moved down the fence to meet their crack pusher out of earshot.

Tyler sat under the lone shade tree until mid-morning, when he was joined by a black man puffed up with balloon tricks. He could tie a balloon like a pretzel, bite off a piece of it, and somehow insert the piece into the balloon without popping anything. Then he put a cigarette lighter in his mouth, and before Tyler knew it, the cigarette lighter was inside the balloon, too! The result was called a pregnant giraffe. When the black man started to hit him up for money, Tyler ducked through the hole and clambered up the embankment, discovering a long lost hobo camp containing a rusty tin can of ashes, a frying pan with no handle, now filled with leaves, a piece of angle-iron which had served as a griddle, dirty paper plates, a plastic spoon, a scrap of cardboard which had probably been used for hitchhiking since it said TRINITY, a filthy pair of pants, and many bottlecaps, to say nothing of used condoms baked and hardened to the semblance of bottle caps, everything beaten into the gravel by some seemingly irrevocable process. Far down below, near the Salvation Army, he heard sirens. Trains shuttled back and forth. He gazed at the segmented grey horizon of gravel cars and grainers, with the ruined Globe Mill in the background, and he longed to get out of this world, just to go.

He heard the crackheads smashing bottles and screeching.

Far away, a figure crossed the shimmering gravel and broken glass with what seemed to be incredible slowness, finally reached the hole in the fence, and kept on moving. Tyler waited. His new companion was a drunk in possession of many tattoos and two little puppies. The man had a kindly, laughing face. Tyler liked him right away.

Drink? said the drunk, passing him a half-drunk quart of beer.

Thanks, said Tyler. He drank. The beer tasted cool and good.

My name’s Tyler, he said.

George, said the drunk. He took the beer back, gulped it down to nothing, and said: I’m not doin’ shit without my morning wakeup.

I get it, said Tyler.

You catching out?

Yep.

You’re gonna need lots of water. And fruit…

I’ve got two gallons.

For two or three days, if you’re careful, you can parley that into nothing.

Where are you from, George?

I grew up on a dairy farm and got sick of it. I don’t know how many tits passed through my hands.

A yellow locomotive flashed between the grainer cars and paused at their head. Tyler rose, ready to make his leap, but just then the yard bulls came in their white car. He sat back down again next to George. The hot morning shimmered above the gravel like a swarm of midges.

Not half bad, laughed George, up here on top of the world…

He felt that George was a good and sincere person, tranquil, beneficent, maybe even enlightened far beyond the false Irene — a drunken Buddha. He smiled.

The sun beat down upon their necks and shoulders and knees. It was not yet ten. He studied the cars: Golden West, Cotton King, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific. The yard bulls drove back and forth, their pale car standing out against the dark freight cars whose pale grafittit was comprised either of exaggeratedly outlined capital letters or else of hooky loopy scrawls. A concrete barrier read: STINKY BOBBY “97”.

George most regally pointed and said: You don’t wanna ride no flatbed. Them motherfuckers gonna bounce you right off.

Railroad men in white helmets came carrying shovels, marching wearily across the sky. The railroad bulls whizzed near.

Oh, he’s picking up his cell phone, said George. We’d better duck back through that fence.

The balloon magician being long gone, George and Tyler shared undisputed possession of their shade tree, waiting for the bulls to go away.

See, if it has two locomotives like that, or three, you’re gonna have a good run, said George. That car’s goin’ somewhere. Get on that car.

When the coast is clear, said Tyler.

A skinny bald man in a grey pickup drove right up to the hole in the fence and said: I’m looking for Seed. Skinny blonde girl who ran away from me. Man, am I fuckin’ pissed!

I’m looking for Africa myself, said Tyler. But if I see any blondes, I’ll send them your way.

Yeah, right. As if they’d come!

The bald man laughed grimly, put the pickup in reverse, and drove off.

Now across the embankment came a man in a loud shirt, holding a paper sack of beer. In the most lordly and self-satisfied way, he ambled up onto the coupling between two grainer cars and leaped on down. Just then George jumped up and yelled to the man: Get off them fuckin’ tracks! Police!

Then Tyler knew that GOD NEVER FAILS, as is written on Salvation Mountain.

| 580 |

Well, well, who do we have here on my railroad? the cop said, grinning.

George, Tyler, and the man in the Hawaiian shirt all loudly laughed.

Right, smirked the cop. Get your hands out of your pcokets, all of you. Put ’em where I can see ’em. Now all of you line up in front of me.

You have on the loudest shirt I ever saw, said the cop. My wife wouldn’t let me be caught dead wearing a shirt like that. I have grounds to bust you just for wearing that shirt.

The man in the Hawaiian shirt was quick to laugh at this joke.

Now what about you? said the cop to Tyler. Did you snitch on anybody?

No, officer, said Tyler.

Did you snitch on me, partner? he said to George.

George was silent.

Who snitched me off? said the cop. I have good hearing. I know one of you two did it. That’s against the law, folks. Who was it?

George hunched and grinned and said: Guilty.

What? smiled the cop, grinning like a shark, spreading squeaky clean terror. Tyler could almost see him as the high school football bully he might have recently been, kicking people to make his friends laugh, confident, always on the winning side.

So you snitched me off, teased the cop merrily. As long as you snitch me off and don’t tell on your buddies, you’re legal, right? Or did I get it wrong, you scum?

They all laughed hilariously.

The cop paced up and down.

What’s in the backpack? said the cop to Tyler.

Food and water, officer.

Any canned food?

Yes, officer.

Well, why don’t you try eating a can of sardines in front of me so that I can bust it across your face? the cop jested.

Tyler managed a smile.

And you, snitch, said the cop to George. Nice tattoos. What joint were you in?

San Quentin and Soledad, officer, said George ingratiatingly.

Hands on your head, snitch. You in the loud shirt, you ever been arrested?

Yes, officer.

For what?

Drunk and disorderly.

All right. I’m going to arrest you again. You were on the tracks. Or maybe I’ll just cite you. It all depends on my mood. As for you, snitch, I told you snitching off a cop is an offense — and he rattled off the number of the criminal code. — I sound just like a Bible, don’t I?

Sounds good to me, officer, everyone hastily agreed.

Now the cop caressed his pistol, which for some reason made Tyler think of old Missouri the Hobo talking about a weapon he’d seen once in his Nam days, called Puff the Magic Dragon: They could put a 40-millimeter round every couple of inches in the space of a fuckin’ football field in two minutes! — Tyler kept as still and quiet as he could.

All right, said the cop to Tyler. Get out of here. You other two, come on down to the car.

| 581 |

He returned to Coffee Camp at sunset, the river now molten gold and bearing the cool black reflection-shadows of bridge-pilings and trees, like tarnish or a char. He didn’t know anybody and didn’t want to. He hid himself under a bush and slept…

| 582 |

It’s not too late, the next preacher said.

Tyler grinned. He said: In my line of work—

Your line of work! That’s a good one, you dirty old bum!

… You try to establish what the relationship is with the person. If there’s any connection at all, you figure that’s biased. If it’s something like a police officer that happens by the scene, you don’t question it. If it’s a union guy, let’s see, a UPS driver sees a UPS guy get hurt, well, they’re both Teamsters, get it? It’s kind of like kissing cousins. You have to figure somebody like that’s biased. It’s like when Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6.14, Do not be mismated with unbelievers. Unbelievers, they’re like non-union guys, see. They’re undercutting the Teamsters. Or when the guy that wrote Genesis kept putting down Cain. How did he know that Cain bumped off Abel? It says they were alone, so that scribbler wasn’t there. Now, I grant that in a civil case the preponderance of the evidence is enough, but we’re talking about damnation here! That’s a criminal case. Talk about preaching to the converted! That’s why no private detective can accept the Bible. It reeks of conflict of interest.

The preacher said: I pity you.

Tyler said: So do I.

He hopped a string of grainer cars which, slow and solemn, like Irene brushing back her hair, bore him away.

| 583 |

For my soul is full of troubles, runs the Book of Psalms, and my life draws near to Sheol.* Domino could say that — oh, she certainly could, for it was quite a job keeping other street-whores under her thumb — and so could John in his office, and so could the bail bondsman who’d misplaced some cash, to say nothing of the reporter for the alternative newspaper in Sacramento who could not get any more advances on his paycheck; and the same complaint might plausibly have been uttered in the slow exhausted gravel-speech of the Wheelchair Men, or in faster parlance by members of the newspaper-fascinated coffee-house crew on Valencia Street: the rain-wetted, cigar-smoking old poet, the thoughtful leather-vested women who licked chocolate-covered spoons to the dreamiest possible music while they gazed across the street at the word HEALTH which formed part of an arch upon a miraculously shining window; hemmed in by the hissing of rain and the sucking sounds of raincoat-sleeves, they polished their troubles to a sheen as of wet window-glass — boyfriend troubles and girlfriend troubles, troubles of money, troubles of pain; how could you say that the woes of the elite were not just as cruel as Domino’s? What hurts hurts. — Make me look happy, rentable Strawberry said to the artist. I’m always sad, so draw a smile on my face. Please? — And John progressed likewise toward Sheol, angry and sad even though his stocks had split twice; and Irene, leaving behind a diamond wedding ring, killed herself to become mistress of the dirt. All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb, but you are cast out, away from your sepulchre like a loathed untimely birth.^† It is the occupation of politicians to deny this ubiquity, nay, universality of corroded hearts, to discount the barren laboriousness of all paths. Reduce corporate taxes, they say, or redistribute the wealth of the parasitic class to the desperate class, and then all who matter can cross the Jordan together and enter into a new land of happiness whose prior inhabitants will dissolve into sea-colored ghosts of dust. Pain may be divided, but no Euclid or Leibniz has yet proven that it can be subtracted. Thus Tyler’s do-nothing’s logic, which led him from Coffee Camp to the quiet of two tents on the riverbank, then onto the rails, to Roseville, Olivehurst, Portland, Barstow, Victorville (burning tracks, brown Santa Fe cars, blue and yellow cars), to Waldo’s desert and Slab City and the Drops; then finally beneath the white pillars of the Miami freeway to the opened hydrant from which homeless nestlings drank — both drink and drinkers eternally approachable like a whore or like God, unnatural spring which flowed down the sidewalk just as the grapevines of rejoicing creep across the vineyard. Water of drunkenness, water of tears, water of coffee-making and handwashing, water that carries away the taint of sweat and excrement down to Sheol, where someday all of us must lie, at one with our filth at last; water of death, poured kindly out to wash and purify the body of his dead Queen, scrubbing the lines and calluses of her hard-working hands before the wailers set her deep into the ground, beyond reach of vigilantes, johns, whores, cares and destruction — she was destroyed, had vanished from the land — water which joins us all, slain and slayers, entering us through our organs of speech, departing from us as poison; water is grateful to the troubled; water quenches the anguish of Irene or Domino: the jackal and the rose must both have water. My Queen is no more! he said to himself, wandering, remnant of himself, from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New Orleans, and then by stages of walking, freight-hopping and hitchhiking to Tampa and finally Miami where beneath the white freeway pillars the hydrant flowed.

On account of that now perpetual fountain’s likeness to a whore and to God, the city fathers, so called, kept resolving between intervals of other desolate business to shut it down, but the mayor of the white outcasts had replied without affected defiance to their sentries and messengers the squad car men that if they sealed off the hydrant, his constituency would have to take their water where they could find it — a fact of nature which the officers recognized and relayed back to the city fathers as such: Vagabonds, goldbricks, self-destroyers, sojourners, fugitives, crooks, whores, panhandlers, fruit loops and banana boats need to drink, too! Why not make it easy on all three sides — namely, on the leaders, on the led like John, Irene, Tyler himself, and the coffeehouse and Coffee Camp people, and on those who drank from fire hydrants? That was how the white mayor told the story, but whether the city fathers had ever (to use a tired civic metaphor) played ball or even been apprised of the hydrant’s continual flow, to say nothing of the homeless mayor’s very existence, the mayor had no basis for saying, although his foundationlessness in no wise impeded his orations, he being almost as greedy of reputed omniscience as he was of cash, which was why he charged every toll he could whenever a new constituent wandered under the freeway pillars to his Caucasian island, whose boards of different colors and sizes had been nailed up under (predominantly) mayoral control to make walls of rough cubes enflanking a line of laundry, an American flag hanging out to dry; and above that island the stretched-elastic sounds of wind and blind traffic comprised the chorus to the mayor’s endless act. The freeway was so high above him that the palm trees which God had permitted in the long thin rectangles of light were as blades of grass; from far away there was only the freeway, beneath which lurked a handful of tiny square silhouettes: the mayor’s box-houses. The mayor kept a little pistol up his ass, so everybody said; at least he kept it somewhere inside his bluejeans, ready to reify his authority as needed. Let’s say that a new couple, good and white, showed up beneath the freeway, admitting that they might stay for more than a night or two: the mayor was willing to rent them a plywood shanty for fifty dollars a month, television hookup included because he knew how to drain images most reliably and illegally from among the cables which buzzed overhead among the roaring cars. The mayor did not pull out his pistol then. He explained that if you were accepted into the community you’d be protected. The main rule was the American rule: to respect the property of others. The mayor gave you two chances. The first time you were caught stealing, out came the pistol as needed; then everybody beat you up, you made restitution, and it blew over. The second time, they pulled down your house and you were never allowed back. But obey the social contract, act a white islander’s part, and you had friends. The niggers on their far too adjacent island were too much like animals to be represented by any mayor, the mayor said. Over there it was the law of the jungle for jungle bunnies. Now, some niggers were all right, and then they were worthy of being called black people. If a black man or a black woman was proved by repeated fair dealing to be such, why, that person was welcome to live on the white island because we weren’t racists. That mattress on the island’s edge, for instance, was Stanley’s. Stanley was the mayor’s best friend. Anita was another worthy black lady who lived with her white man in a palatial packing crate for which they paid the mayor the unofficial rate of thirty dollars a month. Down by the portable toilet, whose shit and used toilet paper now reached to shoulder height, lived Ellen. Ellen was a slut (explained the mayor to visiting Chamber of Commerce dignitaries), a black nigger slut, but she gave good head, so he let her stay. Sometimes she shorted on her rent when her customers went on vacation or whatever it was that they did, but the white mayor was willing to work with her; he had heart, you see. And Ellen obeyed the other rules. In her two years on the island, she had never stolen from anybody. What was more, she lived both tranquilly and literally in the shadow of the toilet. Not every white woman would have been satisfied to breathe that stench! Her religiousness was of the quiet kind. The mayor didn’t go for religion much himself. Sometimes the Catholic relief volunteers showed up with food and clothes for those who prayed, so he’d pray along, but with his fingers crossed, so to speak; he was thinking of giving up that luxurious hypocrisy since rents, haircuts and protection were actually bringing in so much money that he was getting rich. He didn’t need the christlike bastards! Now, if somebody wanted to swallow their crap, he had nothing against it. It was a free country, an American country. If Ellen could bear to live there breathing in the smell of rotten turds all day and all night, why, she could scarf up Jesus, too, for all he cared. Near the river was the island where the Spics lived — Nicaraguans, Cubans, Haitians, Mexicans, the whole lot — and most of them were religious. Ellen sometimes went over to sing hymns with them. That was no skin off the mayor’s nose.

The palm sapling in the middle of the sidewalk, figment of an oasis, appeared to be doing well. Soiled underpants and plastic bags lay scattered in the weeds.

I have been all over the U.S., the mayor said to Stanley. I have never seen white people get the respect we deserve. But we need a few blacks. Some blacks, they’re an extra set of eyes.

And I’m your eyes, huh? said Stanley, amused. Charles, you’re more full of shit than that shithouse next to Ellen’s place.

Stanley, you’re a goddamned black nigger.

That’s the best kind. Gimme a swig of that beer.

You disgust me, you fucking low-life nigger, said the mayor. Here. Take the whole can. You think I want to drink out of any can you’ve nigger-lipped?

Come the black revolution, Mr. Mayor, you know what we’re gonna do to you?

Spraypaint me black so I can keep being mayor. How’s that? Then I’m going to raise the rent on all my white people and give you your kickback, you fucking nigger. How’s that?

All right, said Stanley. Now you listen. From now on, every time you call me nigger, you got to give me a beer. Is that fair or is that square?

The mayor belched and rubbed his head.

Hey, said Stanley. I’m talking to you, Charles. I mean it. Are you my friend or not?

My head hurts, said the mayor.

What do you always got to be calling me nigger for? I don’t go out of my way to insult you. Most of the time I don’t pay you any mind, but today for some reason you’re getting to me, so would you lay off?

I’m sorry, Stan, said the mayor. Case closed. Now you lay off. I’ve got a bad headache.

They sat there for a while drinking and breathing in smog, and then the mayor said: Hey, Stan.

What?

Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a goddamned ugly stupid monkeybrained black black nigger?

Stanley stood up and tried to punch the mayor in the face but the mayor blocked it and shot a hard brawny punch into Stanley’s chest which knocked him down onto the concrete. Stanley lay there groaning.

Jesus, Stan, said the mayor, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit so hard. You okay?

I hit my head, said Stanley. I’m gonna have a lump the size of a robin’s egg. What did you have to keep calling me names for?

Listen, Stanley, I’m sorry. I mean it. I was an asshole.

I’m not so young, you know, Stanley said.

All right, the mayor said. Please let me help you up.

Charles, I want you to know something, Stanley said. People been calling me nigger when I was still inside my Mama’s ass. I really don’t like it. I want you to listen to me, Charles. If you call me nigger one more time today, I’m not gonna say nothing, but when I get a chance I’m gonna hit you over the head or stab you. Tomorrow I don’t say nothing about. Tomorrow nobody can hold you to, you ornery old cracker fool.

You’re bleeding on the back of your head, the mayor told him. I’m going to bandage you up.

Did you hear what I said, Charles?

I heard, and I’ve already told you twice that I’m sorry, which I wouldn’t say to anybody else. You know I have a short fuse.

Oh, fuck it, said Stanley, getting to his feet. I’m the one with the bleeding head and he’s the one with the short fuse.

The mayor looked around to see if anybody was listening, but the place was empty except for one drunk who, attended by the friendly goggling faces of parking meters, snored in a lair of cardboard plates and newspaper sheets draped over ridges of garbage, with his shoes off and his stinking stockinged feet inside an old lampshade. The mayor wasn’t worried abut him. His other constituents were sleeping, screwing, shitting, whoring, scoring, snorting, shooting or most likely panhandling. The mayor himself never left camp. That was why he was the mayor. He ran security.

It must have been three o’clock now, because the blue truck with the white cross on it pulled up to the brown-skinned island.

Oh, shit, the mayor said, treasuring this distraction. — Our guys go out and they work all day and they’re tired, and then those Spics set up the loudspeaker in Spanish. Guys in the holy circle getting saved.

My head hurts worse than yours, said Stanley. Gimme another beer.

I only have but one more.

Give it to me, Charles.

The mayor turned red and clenched his teeth. Then he slammed the beer down on the arm of Stanley’s chair.

Why, thank you, Mr. Mayor. You’re gonna make a nice cocktail waitress someday. Beer could be colder, though.

The mayor rose and stalked away, swearing.

A dirty man whose beard was almost as long and ragged as his backpack came slowly ambling toward the white island. Stanley sat watching him regally, a beer in his hand. The man came closer. Now the man could see the shelters, some of wood, some of cardboard roofed with plastic. The mayor’s house was roofed with an American flag.

The mayor came hurrying back from the toilet. He looked the stranger up and down. He said: You a cop? You a cop?

Nope, said the stranger.

A woman stuck her head out of her cardboard box and perorated: Hey, the police’s attitude toward the homeless sucks. They catch your ID to check on warrants and they don’t return it. I’m monogamous, but I’m homeless so I must be a whore or a crack addict…

So sue me, said the stranger. I said I’m not a cop.

Nobody bothers anybody down here, the woman went on eagerly, because this is the white end. We used to live in the black end. We got robbed three times a day. Anything they think might be useful to trade or sell, they gotta take. And Charles over there, he’s the mayor. He’s the one that saved us from the blacks.

When the woman’s head first appeared, the mayor had wondered whether she might have heard his argument with Stanley, and he was afraid, but her comments appeased his scuttling eyes, so that he smiled.

You look familiar, the stranger said to her. You know Dan Smooth?

Oh, him? said the woman. He raped my daughter an’ only gimme forty bucks…

To no one in particular the stranger said: You mind if I set my bedroll here for a night or two?

Where are you from? said the mayor.

California.

If you want bare ground, that’s free, said the mayor. If you want a house, you’ll have to pay me rent.

How about a house with a yard and a white picket fence? said the stranger.

Are you trying to pull my chain? said the mayor. Stanley! Hey, Stanley! Security!

I’ll just take the yard, the stranger said. I’ll just spread out my roll right there. Any thieves in these parts?

Watch out for those niggers over there, said the mayor. But this guy’s all right. This guy’s my buddy. This is Stanley.

What’s your name, man? said Stanley.

Henry. Henry Tyler.

Not just any black can move in here, Henry, continued the mayor with relish. We had problems when we first went here, so we came out with baseball bats.

Pleased to meet you, Henry, said Stanley.

Tyler shook his hand.

These people in this little area are the only ones I asociate with, the mayor explained. And I advise you to do the same. As soon as you cross that street there, they’ll come after you. Just addicts over there, Henry. Anything they can do, they will do.

Okay, said Tyler. What are the rules here?

Now, everybody here, they’re all fixing to follow either Plan A or Plan B, said Stanley, looking Tyler up and down with shrewd eyes. Which one is it for you?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, said Tyler wearily.

Plan A or Plan B. You can either go to jail, turn your life around and get back to what you need, or you can stay here. What’s your goal, Hank? What’s your aspiration?

Plan P, said Tyler. I could use some pussy. You people have a problem with that?

Stanley said: Mr. Mayor, I think we got another jerk. It’s a good thing you called me. I’m gonna be watching this one.

Why? said Tyler. Is getting a piece of ass against your rules? You still haven’t told me your rules.

A tiny bluish TV shone far away, illegally hooked into the grid. Ellen was bent over the fire hydrant, filling a jug and goose-stepping like a chicken, mumbling beneath the gracious palm trees that bordered the island.

You stayin’ out of trouble, Henry? said the mayor.

Yeah, I’m on a good ticket.

No bullshit, but you just need to respect everybody else. I don’t care what else you do or where you come from.

I know what he gonna do, said Stanley, giggling idiotically. He gonna get me a place. Gonna get me a piece of the rock.

The mayor whirled round. — Stan, did you just snort something? You told me you weren’t going to use no more. You were trying to keep clean. I thought you were going to do it. Oh, you stupid fucking nigger.

Nigger this and nigger that, Stanley chuckled, his pupils huge.

Goddamn. When could you have done that? I thought I was watching you every second. Now what’s going to become of you? Don’t you remember that seizure you had, Stan?

Stanley put his arm around the mayor’s neck. He whispered in his ear: I wanna get out of here, man. So bad.

All right, Stan. Sit down, boy. Sit down and sleep it off. Yeah, I still have that tongue depressor here. Look how you chewed it last time when you seized up. I don’t know why I love you, you worthless nigger.

The woman’s head continued to suspend itself from her box’s doorway, the hanging twitching blanket covering the rest of her.

Tell Stan to get a job, Mr. Mayor, she called laughingly.

Oh, Celeste, you know better than that, the mayor said, getting on his soapbox. Americans can’t get a motherfuckin’ job these days. When we try, they ask us: You speak Spanish? The Spics rule. An’ you know what the Jews say? They say: Take care of your own.

Tyler unrolled his sleeping bag onto the concrete, enjoying the woman’s eyes upon him.

Celeste emerged from her box, armed with mirror sunglasses, almost blonde, trying to look good, checking herself in a dagger-shard of mirror which she kept in her ripped and greasy purse. — You know what kind of job I like best? she whispered in Tyler’s ear.

He smiled at her long cat-face trying to look good, her lipsticked face, her hair shining feebly in the wind, and said: Let me see. Oh, I know. A blow job.

You wanna blow job? I can see you got a big dick.

No, I’m married to Queen Africa.

Oh, well that’s cool. I didn’t really want to do the blow job. What I wanted was the money.

Can I go inside with you and we’ll talk about it?

I got my girlfriend in there. Lemme see if it’s cool with her. I think she’s probably passed out or something…

Celeste scampered back inside, wiggling her rear at him, and then rushed out again and said: Okay, come on, come on, come on, she’s cool with it. What you got for me?

Nice place you have here, said Tyler as soon as he was in the humid stinking darkness. He heard the girlfriend’s unsteady snoring.

Celeste groped for his penis. He put his arm around her and stroked her hair.

You didn’t come in here for head or for pussy, did you?

Nope.

Are you one of them right-wing virgins?

Nope.

I like the Bible a lot, Celeste said shyly. I started out reading the New Testament, reading about Jesus. The thing is, I forget the chapter and the scripture and the verse, but I know it says: No man cometh to the Father except through Me. It doesn’t really matter which church I go to, ’cause I pray to Him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But don’t tell the mayor that. He’s an atheist.

Okay. I won’t tell him.

So, the woman said then, using the word with Germanic finality. What the fuck do you want?

Did you ever hear tell of the Queen of the Whores?

That’s just a stupid old story, like the King of the Road…

No it isn’t, he said. And maybe the King of the Road is out there somewhere, too. You never can tell. But this one, she’s my Queen. I love her and I’m married to her and she’s in trouble so I want to help her. First I need to find her.

Oh, baloney, said Celeste.

Look, you have a mayor, don’t you?

Yeah, he calls himself that.

All right, so why can’t I have my Queen?

What’s her name then?

I already told you she’s Queen Africa.

So she’s a nigger. Then what did you come to me for? Why don’t you live on that nigger island over there?

She lost something magic and I’m trying to get it back for her, which I guess is another way of saying that I lost her.

What did she lose then?

A sapphire.

I’ll put the word out. You have something to make it worth my while?

Well, he said thoughtfully, I could give you five, but if I do that I might as well try out that pussy of yours.

Deal.

When he came out, the mayor said to him: See? Nobody touched your backpack.

Thank you, said Tyler.

We never had a victim in this lot, the mayor said. We call it the American place. Nobody can build here except your black and white Americans. That one over there, you have your Hispanics, and whatever you have over there, we have better over here. We might get into it against each other, but we don’t kill each other like they do.

I get it, said Tyler wearily.

He could see how it had to be. — At Coffee Camp, or even at Slab City, anyone who wanted to could have his bushy privacy; humanity hid away from itself; but under the freeway people couldn’t get away from each other like that; they had to deal with each other, to be citizens.

It was almost evening now. The panhandlers were coming home. Stanley lay reading on a knitted quilt on a piece of foam rubber on a cement divider in the parking lot, next to his coffee can on its two bricks which smoked and smudged to keep the mosquitoes away, and the man beside him, tattooed, naked except for a pair of underpants, sweaty, went and crouched in his box of plywood and tarps, brick bricks on top to keep it dry; and the yellow lights glowed in the tiers beyond the great pillar — the brownskinned island and the white and black islands of separateness.

The Cubans on the brownskinned island knew something about magic, Celeste had said. — And you think she’s sane? said Stanley in disgust when Tyler told him. — And yet I did hear the same story, Henry. I don’t go over there much. Everybody says they sacrifice stray cats and dogs on Thursdays. Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t.

What day is it today?

Monday. No, maybe it’s Saturday. I don’t know what the fuck day it is, guy. Now lemme read!

Okay, said Tyler, stretching and yawning and wandering across this dismal concrete place, past the box in which Celeste and her girlfriend Pat were loudly making love, and he came to the Cuban island.

The first Cuban he met said: I a good man. I never been in prison. Immigration don’t wanna give me my residence. Four months I wait for my permit, two and one-half year… I leave my work because I don’t like it anymore. Then my possibility is finished.

What kind of work was it? yawned Tyler, narrowing his eyes with boredom. Hey, have you seen a small, black-skinned—

In the field, some illegal job pick the fruit, you know. They pay me for one hour one dollar. By the river there is a lot of job they give you, but now with Haiti people come here, not so many job. A lot of people you see here no have the job. Many people here have paper but the problem is they have no job. Some mission come here with food. I think that’s the Baptist church. Right now I have the part-time work for the fields. I been here only one month. Before I was in my sister apartment and she change the apartment and they change their regulation so I can no stay with her no more. My sister is cry…

Do those other people bug you?

The white people, they always say the stupid thing about us, so we watch them. And the black people, three people have the knife cut them bad, but the people here is no knife like that. No knife, but no water, no medicine. And sometimes if you look for jobs the police arrest you.

The man pointed, and Tyler saw a police car rolling slowly and silently by.

I want a magic blue stone, Tyler said. You have any friends who can help me?

Magic for what?

For my Queen.

You a faggot? I no like faggot job.

No, she’s a woman.

Holy Mother! And somebody annoy her for you?

Yeah, said Tyler.

Okay, I ask my friends about this blue stone. You look for me tomorrow? My name Manuel.

I’m Henry.

Good night.

Good night.

The city wants to cut our water off, the mayor was saying when Tyler came back to the white island. A hundred seventy-five thousand a year it’s costing the city taxpayers.

Oh, get out of my face, muttered Celeste.

Stanley was away, his quilt stretched out on the foam rubber pad, his science fiction book from the library opened and face-down.

Lying down, Tyler soon felt Celeste’s caressing hand on his neck. — You wanna come sleep with me and Pat tonight? she said.

Sure, baby, he said. I’ll come in an hour or so, all right?

That’d be really cool, she said. I like you. — She smelled of sweat and shit.

Tyler slept. Sometimes he heard the voices of ghosts, but their wails quickly become as incomprehensible and tedious as the whistling you hear when you let the air out of someone’s tires. When he awoke, the Catholics had arrived at the whiteskinned island, some of whose members were now in a circle holding hands and praying; and the mayor was sitting in his armchair in the parking lot. It was almost dark. The mayor was passing a can of beer back and forth with Stanley. A white dog circled about, with bumps in his head. The bumps were ticks. — Yeah, he’s a street dog, Stanley muttered whenever he noticed. The dog was his.

So how you feeling, Stan? said the mayor.

I didn’t seize, did I?

Not this time.

You know how it is, Stanley said. It’s a day to day process. You get frustrated until you reach the breaking point, and then you go out and do something stupid.

I know, the mayor said.

First you lose your job, then you lose your wife, and then you’re here, Stanley said.

And then you’re safe. Not much else can happen to you, except death or prison.

If I’m so safe, how come I feel so punk?

Because you’re coming down off your stupid chemical shit, said the mayor. Ellen gave me some more beer. Help yourself.

The mayor, yawning, went to the hydrant to rub soap into his greying chest hairs while Ellen passed by with her bucket, and Stanley rubbed the back of his head and squished ticks on his dog. Tyler carried his gear into Pat and Celeste’s box. Inside, he felt a touch. The other woman said: What are you gonna do to me and Celeste tonight?

He said: Well, first I’m going to put my hand between your legs and make you come. I’ll suck your tits, too, if you want. Then I’m going to suck Celeste’s tits and put my dick inside her. And I’ll do whatever else you want me to do to you.

Will you kiss me? Pat said.

Kiss me, too, said Celeste.

He heard the resolute hissing of somebody’s Coleman lantern outside.

Have you eaten? said Celeste.

No, he said.

You want some crackers? That’s all we got.

I’ll kiss you both, he said sleepily.

Celeste stuck her tongue in his mouth. He stroked her matted hair, thinking of the false Irene. He tried not to think about the dead Irene.

He slept well with his arms around the two women, and dreamed of nothing that he could remember. In the morning he crawled out to get water and found himself now already an enfranchised dweller among the rows of plywood houses, all built a little differently, in one a long narrow slit as if for an archer and in another a real picture-window; and from the opposing island he saw a pair of eye-whites in a black man’s face watching him with cautious neutrality. He would have to go over there today and ask about the Queen’s sapphire. Smoke rose from improvised stoves. A black man, naked to the waist, hefted his water jug and sat down with it on the milk crate which constituted the stoop of his house.

Ellen got arrested on a bench warrant last night, the mayor said.

Is her house going to be safe? Tyler asked.

There’s a lot of violence but we don’t have it here, said the mayor. This is white America right here.

Oh, shut up, said Stanley.

Celeste crawled out of that cardboard coffin yawning. — You want some crackers, honey? she said. As far as today, we don’t go hungry. The public’s been real nice to us. You want me to panhandle for you? You’re so nice. I’d do anything for you.

Looks like you got yourself a live wife, said Stanley. More expensive than the dead kind.

Celeste sat down on the curb beside Tyler and took his hand.

How’s Pat doing? he said.

Still snoring away! she chuckled. That girl must have been sleep-deprived all her life.

Hey, Charley, said Stanley. I mean, Mr. Mayor, you demon. You still got that little twenty-two up your ass?

So what if I do? said the mayor. That’s my business.

The only thing to do about violence is take away all the guns, man. I truly believe that.

Well, try and take my gun and you’re going to be one very dead nigger, said the mayor. Violence cannot be solved. You have to solve that one when you’re very young.

I was shot by a police officer when I was fourteen and then I robbed twenty-two banks, Stanley said.

Oh, so you don’t like guns because somebody shot you for doing wrong, said the mayor. My heart bleeds!

Hey, Stanley, stuff your baloney, said Celeste with a cheery laugh. You never robbed no twenty-two banks! Maybe you took a quarter out of a pay phone one time with a piece of wire…

I did so rob banks! cried Stanley, hurt.

Celeste kissed Tyler’s ear and said quietly: Pat and I both love you, you know. Why don’t you forget about your Queen and stay with us? You’ll never have to lift a finger. We’ll do everything for you. We’ll panhandle for you day and night. We just want to have a decent man around the house.

Inside his chest, Tyler felt a sad warm feeling. He squeezed her hand without saying anything.

The first two houses in this parking lot went up on New Year’s, ’ninety-three, the mayor was saying. And we have one rule here, Henry. If you steal, we beat you up and take your house down. That’s the second time. Now, the first time…

Yeah, you told me yesterday, Mr. Mayor. I’ll be good, said Tyler.

They call me the Mayor. I’m always here.

But, getting back to violence, said Stanley, I watched a man get shot in the head four times, right around here. That was back in ’ninety-four. And I thought to myself, I thought…

What are you thinking, Henry? said Celeste.

I’m not thinking much, he said. I’m dead inside.

Why? What happened to you?

Well, I loved my brother’s wife and she killed herself. Then I loved somebody just for having the same name she did, and that didn’t work too well. Then I loved my Queen, and she died. And my mother died, and I lost my job and my car and my house.

My house got run over by a taxicab seven months after I moved in, Celeste said. That taxi came right through the wall and it went through the other wall. Can you believe it? And that’s how I ended up here. But I have to make the best out of it.

How much does the mayor charge you?

No, that’s my box. Mine and Pat’s. We used to live in a big wooden house, but the rent for that home was fifty a month, and twenty-five per person with electricity, and I thought: Who needs this rat race? You know what I’m saying, Henry? Look at that box of ours. It may be cardboard, but it’s free. And it cannot be stolen.

Tyler gripped her hand.

Pat likes you, Celeste said pleadingly. And she never likes anybody. She loves you.

I like her and I love you, he said.

Why do you love me?

Because we have the same sadness, I guess. Because neither of us will ever find what we’re looking for.

And you don’t love Pat?

Well, I don’t know her that well.

Take a walk with me, Henry?

Sure.

Hand in hand, they followed those heavy white double freeway pillars which could go anywhere, even into the brown canal water at the edge of the Hispanic island where a woman pulled a bucket up and carried it back into the world, into the faint smell of excrement.

What we had here once, said Celeste, there’s a big house with a pipe where we can hook us up. That’s what the mayor always talks about. So the county comes up and rips it down. Then they want to cut the water in the fire hydrant. The mayor’s right. Pretty soon we’re all going to have to move.

Tyler waited.

You’re not going to stay with me and Pat, are you?

I don’t know, honey, he said. I just met you yesterday.

I mean, stay for good.

You might have fallen as far as you can fall, he said. You’re maintaining, like the addicts say. I have a feeling I’m going to keep falling and falling, he said.

Well, would anything make you stay? Like, if you found that sapphire, or if you got convinced that it could never be found?

I don’t know, he said again.

Oh, cut the baloney, Henry. I want to know what’s going on inside your mind.

Does Pat beat you?

She hit me once. How did you know? She promised she’d never do it again.

And has she?

No. Yes. Twice. But I love her, so it’s okay. And I know she loves me.

So you do follow the Bible, he said. Doesn’t it say that we’re supposed to love our cross?

What are you trying to tell me, Henry? I’m not stupid.

I love my cross, too.

So when you said you loved me and Pat, was that just bullshit?

No. But my Queen was the Queen of the Whores. I lived with her. I could feel myself changing. Now I’m like one of her girls, he said. Love comes pretty easy to me now, maybe too easy. Maybe it comes pretty easy to you, too.

So you love her more than me. Well, that’s only natural. I love Pat more than you. Why’s that such a problem?

Maybe what you call love is just the feeling of needing to be loved, and maybe what I call love is just — I don’t know what it is anymore.

I don’t need you! she cried fiercely. I just love you!

And why do you love me? said Tyler, walking beside her with his hands in his pockets. The concrete made his feet hurt.

Celeste looked as if she were about to cry. But instead she made herself smile and said: Why do I love you? I told you right when I met you that I could see you had a big dick.

| 584 |

Tyler hopped a freight train — or, I should say, a series of freight trains — to get himself back to Sacramento because he might be able to collect his Supplemental Security Income benefits; and in Indianapolis he met on the rails none other than Missouri the hobo, who, being once again fresh out from detox, was filled with eloquent words for Tyler, whom he did not quite remember.

Oh, I ain’t been able to get nothing, the old man whined. That’s why this country spits on its vets. The hippies were right back in the sixties. I tried to get a mental instability when I got out of Nam, but they just gave me what I call a drunk check. And I only got that for about seven or eight years. Now they go and cut me off. But I showed them. I blew my last SSI check in Reno playing slots… And then the Vietnamese, they get a billion dollars. I never met a decent Vietnamese. The only ones I met, they’re out there hustlin’ and sellin’ their mothers and their sisters. Dealin’ drugs.

Tyler rubbed his eyes, longing for a drink.

I can’t stand authority and I can’t stand the government, Missouri went on. I got a basic commonsense philosphy: Anything the government is for, I’m against.

Sounds like a good political platform to me, said Tyler. Say, Missouri, would you happen to have a dollar on you? I could use a cold drink.

Oh, no you don’t, Missouri said. Don’t you go and hit me up, too. I’m always getting robbed and rolled, especially by the cops. They hate doin’ anything with druggies, because them types got guns. But I’m a drunk, and drunks is easy pickings. There’s no such thing as an honest cop. You think about it. They go to a restaurant, so they get a free coffee. That’s graft, is what it is. The cops didn’t pay for it. That’s insurance. Restaurant knows if they don’t give way, cops just might not show up when they get robbed.

Forget it, said Tyler. By the way, have you run across a small, slender black—

And I’ll tell you something else, kid, said Missouri. There ain’t such a thing as a decent wetback, just as there ain’t such a thing as a decent cop.

All right, Missouri. I’ll file that away under W. I’m going to crawl inside this grainer and sleep.

Hey, where you headed? asked the old man.

What’s the difference? laughed Tyler. Long as I’m rolling, I’m rolling.

I heard that.

Maybe Sacramento. Is Loaves and Fishes still open?

That place? They never give you nothing. Why, the food’s only half cooked. And they tried to take control of my entire SSI check, back when I had SSI. Why, if I’d allowed them push me around that way, I wouldn’t even have had tobacco! But I always have tobacco, ’cause I buy a month ahead of time.

Okay, Missouri, said Tyler. I feel rotten. I need to sleep. You taking this train?

Damn right I am… You got any tobacco?

See you in the yard in Omaha…

And he crawled into the back of his grainer and refused to stick his head out, even though Missouri whined and pleaded.

| 585 |

When he got back to his former home eight days later, thirsty and stinking, Coffee Camp looked crowded, so he wandered through midtown and downtown, which didn’t seem to have grown, and crossed the I Street bridge to West Sacramento where it was cool by the river and the long swirly pillars of light slanted through the water. This was the last place he’d ever seen the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen. The water-smell of the dark black night flowed around the windy bridge where Tyler stood gazing at downtown. One skyscraper resembled a perfume bottle full of light. A long time ago, when he’d been a teenager in high school, he’d walked along this catwalk holding a girl’s hand. Here at the midpoint where it was bright they’d kissed. He looked down through the grating at water-darkness.

Two men with a dog were coming down the bridge. The dog’s paws clicked upon the grating. One of the men said to Tyler: You want some doses?

Africa’s my drug, he replied.

The men walked on, with ugly sneering laughs.

He thought to himself: Is there no place anymore, not one, not the smallest darkest hiding place for me?

| 586 |

He longed to know whether he had failed or whether he was already there. Had he continued steadfast enough? Was the Queen proud of him? Most important of all, was he becoming a better person, or had he merely laid himself waste?

He knew what John would saty. And Dan Smooth would not have praised him, ever. But in his living dream, when slumberous Africa comforted him in her arms, and Irene opened her womb to him, the world’s shadow-figures amused him only, unable to touch him either for good or harm. In a sense, he lived now like Buddha himself — or Cain, wandering, free of all attatchments except his own adorable charms. And so… And so…

But why did he feel so radically isolated from her, the only one of the two he really loved, the one who…

The two men came back. They set their dog on him.

| 587 |

Once upon a time there lived a man named Henry Tyler whose enemy was Jesus. This may seem peculiar, since that Name’s purity remains as white as the naked-scratched steel on railroad tracks; besides, Jesus loves and is loved by losers-of-everything, in whose ranks Tyler had long since been enrolled, but because he was a Canaanite, which is to say idol-worshiper and lover of an overthrown goddess, he held Jesus blameable for his loss, no matter that the Israelites, not Jesus, were the ones who swarmed down upon Canaan — no matter that the Canaanites held their own even in Jesus’s own time; no matter that Jesus healed a Canaanite woman’s daughter of some demoniacal sickness (not, however, without first feeding her a helping of scorn). Down on the gravel, looking at the railroad spikes which had worked themselves into varying degrees of looseness on those long rusty double journey-blades, Tyler wanted to run away from Jesus, but wherever he went, he saw Jesus’s name chalked up on walls and trestle-bridges. For him, JESUS equalled DEATH. Whenever Jesus was signified to him, he said: Oh, please, don’t let it be true. — Whom was he begging? Not Jesus, for certain. Did he believe in God? The vanished Queen of Darkness couldn’t help him. He believed in her — and maybe only in her. He knew that she couldn’t help him, and so when he whispered or muttered please don’t he was entreating only as a child does, hopeless and fearful, but still thinking that some miracle may come, if only the need becomes desperate enough or can be expressed movingly enough. We stop being children when we stop believing that we can move the immovable or ride all trains grey, green, brown and blue. A week after my latest AIDS test, with another week to go before learning whether the verdict is doom or the usual qualified anxiety, I wake up with a sore throat, aching and feverish. Wouldn’t it be too much of a coincidence, if it were really AIDS? It must be the flu. But of course, waiting for life or death never stops being stressful, and stress lowers resistance, so that the AIDS virus which already lurks in my blood now laughingly proclaims its existence. And Irene is pregnant. What if she and the baby were doomed, too? I can’t eat anything. I can’t sleep. I can’t wake up; I know I’m not awake because how could this horror be so real? Oh, please, don’t let it be true. I want to die because I’m afraid to live, but unfortunately I’m also afraid to die. Who will help me? The people who live are the ones I’ve injured. How can I go to them? And Jesus? That quickwitted, intolerant, impatient, sarcastic disputant, who told a bereaved man: Leave the dead to bury the dead, who scourged the moneychangers in the temple, who quizzed and commanded those he met, who refused to see his own mother because he had no mother anymore, no earthly family, no kin at all except those who believed as he did, how can I face him? I’m not quite dead, but I want to bury myself. I don’t want to be flogged out of my sordid niche; I don’t dare to be questioned or answered. Please love me; help me. I love without doctrine. Can’t you? I’ve loved righteous and evildoing women alike. I feel sick and afraid, and my throat hurts. Oh, Jesus, come to my aid. Help me. Help me. But I’m afraid of your help. I’m afraid that you might gaze into my eyes and then burst out like Domino: Why am I so ashamed of your life? I don’t dare to examine my life anymore. Don’t examine me. Maybe I didn’t wash myself clean enough for you. I’m so ashamed. Don’t seek to know me. I cannot ever be unknowable like you in your majestic incomprehensibility; I am all too knowable; I have grimy secrets to hide. I am human. I am wicked. I am a bad boy. Now my father, who is DEATH, comes to punish me. He comes as stately as a train rolling rustily over a rust-brown river. Jesus, I know you could persuade him not to drag me away this time. I know you could defend me from him. But I dare not appeal to you, because self-revelation is worse than death. I’d rather die miserably alone; I’ll shoot myself in a tall field of grass; I’ll go to the edge of town on one of these cloudy or rainy purple days which mark the last season of my life, and with my pistol in a paper bag I’ll walk until I can’t see the highway anymore. I’ll lie down in the mud. Quickly now, before I get cold! I’m already shivering. Raise the heavy gun. My hands shake. I’m cold; I waited too long. The grass hisses over my head. Now I’m wet to the skin. I’ve lived too long. I’m breaking promises even at the very end. I lie on my back in a muddy puddle. I bring the gun down against my forehead. I will escape revelation. I will sneak sordidly out of life because I haven’t the courage to see or be my own shame.

But Henry Tyler was not that kind of coward. The smoldering red sun of judgment already hung over his left shoulder. He had faced it; he had participated in his trial and heard the sentence. He’d eaten his portion of scorn. Now Jesus inscribed seductions before him everywhere; why didn’t Tyler want to be reconciled? But Tyler did not want to. He was too proud. He wanted to be honorably damned. Oh, please, don’t let it be true. But if it’s true, then don’t ever presume to believe you can extort my full soul as the price for rendering it untrue. A piece of my soul I’ll sell you, by all means; like other prostitutes I’ve been amputating meaty hunks of myself for all comers ever since the Vice Squad shut Eden down. I can be numb; I can lose most of myself, but inside my spinal column lives a shy sad caddisworm who’s not for sale.

The three eyes of a locomotive came glaring down the track. Tyler wanted to run away from Jesus. But instead of escape he met only the stale diesel breath and diesel wind of a train which wasn’t going to stop, the engineer high up in his sunshine-hued locomotive peering out the window, and then the train rumbled past with double- and triple-tiered loads of cars bound for Stockton or Los Angeles.

Beside him on the gravel sat a middle-aged hobo whose sad-hound eyes watched the train vanish, then blinked, watered, blinked again with bloodshot patience.

Where are you bound? said Tyler.

I finally just quit worrying about all that crap, all those things to do, said the hobo. I don’t even care anymore whether I get on a train or not.

Tyler said: I want to go someplace far away from Jesus.

The hobo pointed in the direction of the faintly whistling train. He said: It’s sixty-four miles to Gold Run. I been there. It’s six hundred and ninety miles to Terminus, Utah…

Trusting in him, struggling to see some hidden lesson in what he’d already seen, Tyler saw how the tracks tapered and curved into a vanishing point — a point beyond God, yet much nearer than Terminus. Indeed, the vanishing point did not look very far away. Might it not be possible that faith could get him there?

That was south. He turned and gazed north, in the direction that the train had come. Long before the horizon, conveniently marked for him by the developer Benvenuti’s so-called Renaissance building and by the pallid, blue-windowed library high-rise, he saw another vanishing point.

He went behind a bush, so that the hobo couldn’t see him, and kneeling down on the tarry gravel he prayed to the Queen: I know you’re dead, so you’re too far away and too busy to come back to me, but please can’t you send me an angel to show me how to get to the vanishing point?

Then he stood up. He had faith. His knees hurt from the gravel. His shoulders ached from carrying a duffel bag full of heavy ripe fruit, a blanket and clothes, and most of all, water (sixty-four pounds per cubic foot) across bridges and freeway overpasses in the hot sun. He walked around the bush and found a girl sleeping on his bedroll. It was his dead sister-in-law. He took off his coat and quietly draped it over her legs.

She ain’t moved none while you were gone, said the hobo. She just been catchin’ up on her shuteye. She sure is a purty little peach.

Yes she is, said Tyler.

I used to be married one time, the hobo said. But then I died.

Is everybody dead around here? said Tyler.

I don’t know about you, said the hobo.

Well, how would I know?

Do you cast a shadder? said the hobo. They say that’s the most reliable test. Stand up an’ walk around. Well, heaven’s all clouded over. Can’t really tell. I ain’t cast no shadder ever since I got good and dead and buried.

They’re phasing out this yard, Tyler said. I used to see so many trains here. Now it’s going to be new houses, and where that trestle bridge is down there, that’s going to be a mall.

That’s why we’re here, the hobo said. We all been phased out. ’Course I don’t know about you.

You already said that.

Well, look. You got a mirror, son? Breathe on the mirror. If it don’t turn misty, then you’re dead. It’s that simple.

Now why would I have a mirror? asked Tyler reasonably. Do I look like the type who shaves? I gave up shaving when I became homeless.

All right. See if you can hold your breath forever. Just stop breathing. If you can do that, you know you’re dead.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, said Tyler in disgust. You’re telling me you’re dead, but you’ve been sitting here breathing all this time. What’s more, brother, you have wicked bad breath.

I do? said the hobo in amazement. I guess I ain’t brushed my teeth in a week or two. My wife used to nag me about that, but I don’t hold it against her. Out of all the woman I’ve known, she was the one who… You know, her mind…

You talk as if she’s the one who’s dead.

She might as well be. Don’t you know that the dead grieve for the living? Don’t you know nothin’?

From the coupling between two tanker cars a young man appeared, leaping down onto the tracks. Tyler waved. The young man swerved toward them, coming rapidly, alertly along the splintered, splitting ties whose stamped dates proclaimed them to be less than fifteen years old. How quickly everything goes! Strips had rusted off the verde-grising rails. The hobo looked him over, then cracked open a hip flask of Wild Turkey in a paper bag and gulped. Tyler watched the young man stony-eyed, not sure yet whether he was friend or foe. He was still far away, but now they could hear the young man’s rapid footsteps on the gravel. Irene’s eyelids trembled open. Tyler ran to her and held her hand. — It’s okay, honey, he said. Don’t be afraid.

Irene smiled and gripped his fingers tight. Her dark, made-up eyes were sickeningly beautiful. He felt as intimate with her as with his Queen, with whom he had shared so much pain.

Anyone been bothering you? said the young man.

So far, so good, said Tyler. What’ve you been up to?

Just checking out some pieces, the young man said.

Over the same coupling now emerged a black-uniformed railroad bull, with another bull coming briskly around from the rear of that string of cars. — Hold it! they called.

The young man lowered his head and began to walk away.

Stop right there! called the first railroad bull.

The young man ran.

The railroad bulls chased him but couldn’t catch him. So they gave up and came slowly gravel-crunching back to Tyler, the hobo and Irene.

Did he say anything to you? said the first bull.

Just asked if anybody were bothering us, said Tyler.

And what did you say?

I said nope, said Tyler.

He must’ve been doing something wrong, to be running away like that, the bull said smugly.

You got that right, officer, Tyler said.

What do you mean? cried Irene. Is it wrong to run away from a man with a gun?

Nobody said anyting.

Well, said the first bull, upon whose silver badge the sun sparkled with an ominous splendor, what are you all doing here?

We love trains, said Tyler. We’re train buffs, officer. We’re just trying to figure them all out.

What do you mean, figure them out?

Well, like you see that car over there? That says Burlington Northern. And right next to it, there’s a Southern Pacific car. And it’s so strange to think that two railroad cars from so far apart would end up coupled like that. It’s almost like magic. In fact, it’s almost divine. I for one never could have predicted it. I mean, can you explain how that could have happened?

Explanations aren’t exactly my job, said the bull with a sly smile.

You see what I mean? said Tyler enthusiastically. And then there’s the matter of that train that just blew through here without stopping. It was loaded full of brand new automobiles! And we wondered where it was going. I was thinking maybe Stockton or maybe Los Angeles. But both of those places already have so much traffic that they almost don’t need any more cars. So it’s quite a mystery. There’s so much to think about.

So you’re saying you’re train buffs, said the railroad bull.

I guess you could call us that. Train enthusiasts.

We’ll need to see your identification now, said the first bull.

Tyler took out his driver’s license, and the second bull took it and began writing up a report.

You’re homeless, right? said the first bull to the old hobo.

Homeless, well, I don’t know about that, officer. I got my own little plot of ground.

Where are you from?

Georgia, originally. But I been out here in California for about thirty some-odd years.

You have any ID?

Well, I have this food bank card but it’s expired.

The second bull took the card, studied it, and announced: This card is expired.

Yeah, that’s what I said, the hobo replied. I’m expired. I done expired four years ago now. And this fellow here, we needed you to figure out if he casts a shadder or what.

He’s drunk, said the second bull.

The first bull, spying around wisely, saw the paper bag with the bottle of Wild Turkey in it. — Whose is this? he said.

Tyler and Irene kept quiet. After a long silence the hobo said: It ain’t mine.

Sure looks pretty fresh, said the bull. And the cap is off. — Expertly he kicked it over, and every drop sank down into the gravel. The hobo licked his lips more sadly than ever. And the railroad bull smiled.

How about you, miss? said the railroad bull to Irene. You live with him?

We’re just friends, said Tyler quickly, not wanting to implicate Irene in his own filthiness. Do you have any ID, honey?

Irene stood up and took her billfold out from under Tyler’s coat. She opened it. Tyler suddenly began to get a sinking feeling in his chest, confirmed by the whistle and glimmer of an oncoming locomotive. Irene withdrew her California driver’s license and gave it to Tyler, who passed it over to the second bull.

This ID card is expired also, the bull said.

Well, sonny, now you know, the hobo said to Tyler. The gummint test is more reliable than mirrors and shadders. ’Cordin’ to the gummint test, you ain’t dead. She and I, we flunked the test. But the gummint said you’re still alive. You still gotta pay taxes to the gummint.

Pardon me, officer, said Tyler. I was wondering if my ID was expired.

Nope, said the railroad bull.

All right then, said Tyler to Irene. I was pretending about you, but you’re—

Please please don’t say it, said Irene. I’m not here for that. It hurts me to hear that said.

The locomotive screamed loudly. The train roared and clanked through the yard while everyone waited patiently. Tyler counted cars until he was nauseated. He never saw a single open doorway. The train trembled angrily, perspiring diesel-fumes. Then it was gone.

Don’t they ever stop here anymore? he asked the bulls.

Why don’t you ask your friend there, chuckled the bull who’d kicked over the hobo’s Wild Turkey.

In silence, the other bull handed back everyone’s identification cards.

We’re going to have to ask you to move on, said the first bull. Technically, you know, you shouldn’t be on Union Pacific property.

I understand, officer. How about just letting us watch the next train go by? said Tyler.

All right, the bull said. But you’ll have to move up to the right of those power poles. That way you’ll be off railroad property.

All right, said Tyler. Thank you, officer.

Thank you, officer, said the hobo obsequiously.

Irene, glaring nobly at the two bulls, gathered up her belongings in silence.

Now what? she said when they reached the power poles.

What are you asking me for, sweetheart? I thought you were supposed to be telling me what to do.

Oh, that’s rich, the hobo said. You’re such an idiot. You don’t even know if you’re dead or alive.

Knock it off, said Tyler. If you’re so enlightened, how come you can’t stop being an alcoholic even after you’re dead?

Irene smiled sadly.

After a long time, the long, wheeled wall of waiting boxcars across the track suddenly clanked. Then hissing screams of steam were uttered. The engineer was testing the breaks. In a moment, the train would depart. Anxiously the three sojourners looked both ways, and found the railroad bulls gone or at least out of sight. Tyler and Irene ran across the gravel-clattering open space, knowing that the engineer could see them and hoping that he did not care. Just in time they threw themselves up into the sunstruck interior of a boxcar: yellowed old paint with brown scratches and black rust-islands all indescribably beautiful like taffy with caramelized sugar. As for the hobo, he first rabbited himself into a grainer car, then changed his mind and leaped into Tyler and Irene’s almost perambulating cave. — I still move pretty good, he chuckled. I ain’t got no complaints. — Tyler sat beside Irene on his bedroll, with his arm around her waist.

The train began to move. The whole world paraded past! And Tyler realized that this was the ultimate extended trace.

Look! said the hobo raptly, raising his arm in a Roman salute. The new courthouse! — He had civic pride.

When she was alive, Irene, who thanks to a dangerously well hidden addiction to unrealistic expectations had never known much happiness anyhow, excepting the anticipatory kind, had developed a stomach ulcer in her first half-year of marriage — fitting emblem of that marriage: painful, bloody wound. She vomited blood in secret. She didn’t want to tell John. She pitied herself, seeking out Tyler’s pity in an oblique manner obscured by layers of affection. And he’d obliged; he’d pitied her and worried about her.

I love you so much, she said then.

I love you, too, he said. You have to go to the doctor or you’ll croak.

Maybe that would be the best solution.

But where would I be? he cried out.

I love you so much, she said.

And where would Tyler have been? Why, right here! And right here was not so bad… The ceiling was corroded beach-white and sky-blue around the edges, metal semblance of some tropical heaven. And yet Irene’s expressionlessness as she stared out the open door stirred up in him an unpleasant thrill of eeriness, which rapidly sank to dreariness, as if he had hopped a freight train which was surely going all the way to Elko but which after crossing the river then backed up, turned, and went west across the I Street bridge to end in some dead switching yard in West Sacramento where, after having been slammed back and forth for a long time, he suddenly felt deadness: his locomotives had abandoned him; he was to be left amidst gravel and mosquitoes all night and maybe all the next day or even all week; his water would last two days, so he’d better come out, put his bedroll on his back, and start walking to God knows where, maybe to the Land of Nod. Irene did not care for him at all.

I love you so much, he said experimentally.

What’s the use of loving a dead person? she bitterly replied.

I don’t see what use has to do with anything.

How do you feel now, Henry?

I feel — well, tortured and confused, but I know that my unhappiness isn’t yours.

Irene was silent.

Well, he said finally, do you still love me?

I don’t remember. You didn’t call me back to love you. You just prayed that I’d come and be your angel.

That’s rich, the hobo said. You’re both just a couple of chumps.

They reached Coffee Camp and crossed the American River, then backed up near Loaves and Fishes, and the old mill towered grimly out the open door. Tyler and Irene passed rusty wire, sunlight, bowing trees, the stylized outline of a woman white on a grey siding. Irene wanted to lean out to see everything, but he gripped her arm, he said because that was how you did things when you were pulling a surveillance job, but really because he did not want her to fly away.

A glossy black locomotive bore toward them. It said TRUCKEE. The paint shone and glistened with a mirror finish, reflecting golden blobs of sunlight. Then came the long mahogany passenger cars. Irene gasped with pleasure. Through one of the windows Tyler glimpsed playing cards laid out by a sherry decanter.

Did you see that? cried the hobo. That was a blast from the past. That train sure don’t cast no shadder.

What do you care? said Tyler. You’re a blast from the past yourself.

The tarnished pigeonholes of an old mail car rattled by, gaping its many lips of canvas mail sacks.

My Daddy told me they used to dump a mailbag every five seconds an’ sort it out, the hobo said.

Oh, come on, said Irene.

No, darlin’, I swear it. My Daddy didn’t never lie to me.

Irene smiled. — I know what’s on that mailcar, Henry, she said.

What’s that? Tyler said.

All the letters I never sent you, and all the letters you wrote me that I never answered.

Maybe you’re right, he said, and just then an envelope blew out the window and into the open boxcar where Irene, laughing, snatched it up and opened it. It said: Irene, please. I want to live inside your heart, to know you, care for you, and sleep within your arms. I want to drink your spit. I want to make you happy. I think about you every day. — Irene giggled and showed it to the hobo, who said: I don’t give a fuck. — Tyler was red with humiliation and rage.

Oh, are you angry? said Irene. I’m sorry. I forgot that people who aren’t dead yet still have secrets to hide.

Just forget it, he muttered.

Henry?

What?

Will you really forget it? I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. You’re just so funny sometimes. Oh, look!

The dining car was going by, showing off bone china and sterling silver for Irene.

A fire-red caboose made Irene smile happily, and then the train was gone.

We all shoulda caught that train, the hobo said. Train like that only comes along every hundred years. That’s the train bound straight for Jesus and his angels.

Glad I missed it, then, said Tyler. I don’t know about you.

Where were all the passengers? said Irene.

How should I know? You’re the angel. You’re supposed to have all the answers.

That was a nasty thing to say.

I’m sorry, Irene. I didn’t mean it that way.

Another strange train rushed past. First he could see the cow-catcher of the locomotive with its vertical ribs like teeth, the great number 1 inscribed on a circular window and also on a metal breast — was this the fabled Governor Stanford train back from the days when X Street was still walled with trees? He narrowed his eyes, frowning at the smoking-car, which resembled a mummy’s sarcophagus, all golden, golden, inset with nested beads, webs, zigzags and narrow figures in fields of burnished gold-leaf within blue and red boxes.

Irene said: I told you there’s no use loving a dead person.

Was there any use loving you when you were alive?

Sometimes you’re so mean. Maybe I was mean, too. Do you want me to go? I could just go right now. Maybe that’s what I should do. Is that what you want?

No, said Tyler.

I’m going to go anyway. We’re all going to go now. We’re almost there. Listen, Henry. You need to think really hard now. There’s an answer, I promise. But it has to come from you. If you figure it out now, you’ll be saved.

Can you give me a hint?

There’s no time for hints, Henry! Look, there it is! I’ll tell you this much — it has to do with love…

Then they were in sight of the vanishing point where train tracks became metal rivers veined by the shadows of cottonwood trees just as women’s breasts are veined so richly by blood vessels in infrared photography.

Loving you?

What did I tell you about loving a dead person? That’s all you talk about. Oh, Henry, if you end up being damned I’m going to cry.

Loving Jesus? he said wearily. I refuse to do that. He killed my Queen…

Henry, Jesus isn’t what you think. He doesn’t hate you. He’s not against you. But—

You know what, Irene? I don’t like this guessing game. If what you say is accurate, which means that you know but won’t tell me, then you don’t love me.

You truly believe that, Henry? That means you don’t trust me. That means you don’t love me… Oh, and now it’s too late.

At the exact vanishing point, a fish leaped. Then Irene, the hobo and the train all vanished, and Tyler drowned in sadness.

| 588 |

Time went by, a good long time, and of course he never found the Queen or either of the two Irenes. By then he wasn’t even really trying. In that strange half-season when winter has been outgrown but spring continues grey and bleak we find him standing under the freeway on Alaskan Way South, leaning against a concrete pillar with his hands in his pockets, his skull a reliquary of broken golden beads and tarnished copper thoughts as he looked out at the long grey strata of sky, land and sea in Puget Sound. He was cold and wet, his wool hat wet; he had ten dollars in his pocket, so he wandered up to a sporting goods store to buy another hat but the clerk, Middle Eastern and excitable, shouted: Get out, bum! — That night it rained heavily, almost overpowering the groans and farts of the other men in the shelter, and the next morning it was sunny, windy and cold. He sat on the granite perimeter of a garden strip which abutted the Federal Office Building on Marion and Western, and gazed up beyond the gently swinging traffic lights at the long tight rope of concrete which bisected the world, and a black prostitute in bright white jeans drifted by, smoking a cigarette, peering down at the sidewalk in hopes of miraculous treasure.

Sunlight suddenly struck the concrete ribbon, and transformed the rare people bestriding it into angels. Now it was very sunny and bright throughout the whole world, and Tyler with his wool cap and grubby little duffel bag rose up to become part of the sun.

The sun dazzled the pavement between a bowlegged panhandler’s thighs. Tyler nodded. The man nodded back. He was as old as a Northern Electric train from 1914.

How ya doin’? said Tyler.

Bad, said the other, as Tyler had expected. That was what they always said.

Well, why’s that? cried Tyler in cheery amazement.

Don’t feel too good.

Uh huh.

You got any cigs?

I don’t smoke.

Any change?

Lemme see, said Tyler, his fingers ostentatiously snailing through his pockets. What’s the cheapest place to stay around here?

The cheapest or the cheapest?

The cheapest.

Pioneer Square.

Tyler went there. That night there was another storm. Seattle’s skyscrapers wriggled and swayed in the rain like hollowed out tree trunks eaten by phosphorescent worms.

He awoke with the taste of Irene’s cunt in his mouth.

Merry Christmas, a man said, slipping a twenty-dollar bill into Tyler’s cup.

Is it Christmas already? he said. That’s Christ’s day. I can’t accept that money, sir. I’m a Canaanite. Well, what the hell. I guess I can use it. I never did have principles.

Merry Christmas, the man said again, insistently.

You’re welcome, said Tyler.

The man sighed and walked away. Then Tyler felt sad and guilty, and decided to catch out to Sacramento to become however peripheral a part of one of those superdark foggy blue nights when the light inside was as bright as lemon peels in drinks and all the whores were singing along with the jukebox as if they were opera stars, and the whores caressed each other, rubbed each other’s necks, and talked about getting the hell out of here, know what I’m saying? and the light outside was Tyler’s light, the rainy streetlight radiance of Canaanites and sad lean men the color of cigarette smoke. So he departed Seattle’s long sagging alleys whose dumpsters sparkled with fresh rain, black puddles in its blackness and the smell of piss. Sensing that the Celestial Vice Cop was tailing him with intent to reduce him into a thinly shrieking ghost like Irene or a silent ghost like his eternally adored Queen, all the way to Roseville he boxcar-flew like one of the many sick lost seagulls one sees in inland places, squeaking feebly in the creosote wind of the Union Pacific yard as the grass bowed and chittered, and he breathed locomotive-clouds as he hid from bulls and preachers behind barbed wire. Over by the auction yard he found a syringe stuck in a crack in a telephone pole, but left it because it was some other wanderer’s treasure. He came to a little grey man who hunched rapidly along between the tracks. When Tyler asked where the vanishing point was, the man said he’d never heard of it. When Tyler asked him where to camp, he said he had no idea. He asked about Irene and the Queen, and the man would not reply. So Tyler thanked the man, who said nothing. An instant later, the man had completely disappeared. Later, when the Reno bound freight began to move, Tyler saw him poke his head out of the back of a grainer car. Tyler himself went west. Thunder crawled over the tracks, pounding him with light and icy drops. He jumped off the train in the yard just south of Coffee Camp which was now sodden and almost deserted, only one hardy speed freak couple living in a dome tent, the others all gone to shelters; the river was flooding; the paths were underwater…

Sometimes he speculated that the Queen and Irene were actually one — that is to say, a double-sided incarnation of Something Else — but on a certain cold and tule-fogged morning he awoke still clinging to his Queen and shouted: I hate Irene! and felt eased of half his pustulent love. So he shouted it again and again. Unripened raspberries sometimes wilted on the vine, the leaves riotous red like an alcoholic’s cheeks. I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! On the fifth anniversary of Irene’s suicide he hopped a train all the way down to Los Angeles to try to find her grave but Forest Lawn now held so many new dead people that he wasn’t sure where it was, and as he tramped around in his dirty clothes and boots trying to find it a security car pulled up, and two guards politely drove him out. (After they had dropped him a good distance away, one guard said to the other: God, that guy stinks worse than any stiff!) As long as he could, he stared back over his shoulder at the columned pseudoclassical white palace that said FOREST LAWN. I hate Irene! Then he kept going down toward San Bernardino, everything bluish grey below him, the mountains like swirls of smoke. There were bands of pressure in his head. The mountains gradually became clearer, and his headache went away. But Irene had blackjacked him, and his head would never be right again. Fifty-odd miles out from Palm Springs he took refuge in a huge freight yard which paralleled the freeway, its grainers and boxcars forming a new horizon with smoggy mountains behind the Burlington Northern. But soon he was hot and out of water. He began to walk down the hot black ribbon of track which lanced on into the desert past the whirling windmills, and by sunset, his throat swelling up with thirst, was standing beneath a big yellow billboard that said HELP US CATCH KILLERS, the desert foaming and boiling with creosote bush and rabbitbrush and sand as pale as steamed milk dolloped on coffee. The heat took his thoughts away from Irene with her vague smile and her bright trivialities. His neck steamed and his brain boiled. Sweat ran from his eyes like tears. He inhaled the hot dry air, moving carefully. A cicada chattered like some distant generator. Then he saw a Mexican lying in the sand. He turned the man over and said: How are you doing? — Not too good, said the Mexican. Too hot. I got sun poison… — Yeah, me, too, Tyler laughed. I figure we both got that years ago. — but then darkness fell down on them to save them, and a long cool train came hollering by to carry them all the way to Indio where before dawn they were drinking their fill from the restroom of a gas station. He never saw the Mexican again. I hate Irene! he shouted. Then everything became white and bright, like coming up out of the ocean into the light — so much light!

He went to visit Waldo, but authority had banished the autistic man, leaving his hulks and his nosecone useless in the sand. — In Phoenix you know what they done awhile back? another hobo said to him. Passed an ordnance that garbage is city property. So if you gotta eat, if you open a dumpster, they can bust you for stealing.

He went to Slab City. The angry man and his mother were still there. — Once you get here, it’s hard to get back out, the angry man said. It’s like a hole. — The shy woman was out collecting cans. I hate Irene!

So many of us are sure we’ll always be wherever we are; but Tyler knew better because he traveled a little more than Irene. And in his life Tyler had not had very good luck in finding and keeping people. I hate Irene! So one day he blew in to Miami, wanting to see if Celeste still lived under the freeway, because she had said to him: I hate all those women that get a new husband every week. The guys here respect me like a sister, because I don’t do that. But Ellen has a new husband every week. And worse yet, her kids have a new Daddy every week. When her baby cries, she blows crack smoke in its mouth until he gets quiet. Sometimes I want to take a bullwhip to her! — Celeste had wanted to be unchanging, and he had wanted to believe her, so he imagined that nothing would change, but of course Freewayville was gone. The city fathers had razed it and then fenced it. Their justice was as cruel and useless as that painted water on Salvation Mountain.

A couple of miles northeast of the freeway, almost within sight of a homeless shelter, the mayor’s black friend Stanley and some other men were lying on mattresses on the sidewalk.

City cut that fire hydrant off, Stanley said. Then they moved us out and up to that shelter. So we were allowed to stay there only two months. Now we don’t know what to do. I guess everybody figured they’d help us get a job. Only by the time we got to that shelter there weren’t no jobs. So here we are, out on the Slab. We call this place the Slab, Henry.

Those words of Stanley’s detonated a terrifying flash of comprehension within Tyler’s brain. The Slab and Slab City were both equivalent places with equivalent names: they both derived from the slabs on which Dr. Jasper performed his autopsies.

You ever find that broad you was lookin’ for? asked Stanley.

I never did.

How long you keep lookin’ for her?

Oh, what’s the difference, Tyler muttered. I hate Irene anyway. And the Queen, I can hardly remember her as she really was. I don’t believe. I don’t love. I’m just lost. How long’s it been for you, Stan?

Since what?

Since everything went bad.

I been homeless since 1987, so it’s been exactly ten years now. It comes from using crack cocaine. And it sucks out here. Too much fightin’.

Well, let’s see, it’s been three years for me now, Tyler said.

Congratulations, sucker. Where you been?

Fell asleep on a grainer car last year and woke up in Dubuque.

Aw, Henry, you was always the wise-ass.

Stanley, he said, sitting himself comfortably down, are we ever going to get out of this?

Out of what? To do what and go where, for what reason?

Look. You remember what you thought the first night you slept out in the street?

Stanley laughed bitterly. — That I wouldn’t be out there too long. And now look at me. I’m all scarred from gettin’ in these fights. Happens every time I get drunk. When I drink, I win some, I lose some. Don’t matter one way or the other. Last fight, some fool took my crack stem and wouldn’t give it back. But crack’s still good to me… And now I’m finally gettin’ to like being homeless. Best thing is, people gimme money sometimes for nothin’…

He yawned, stretched, rolled over so that he was lying on his suitcase. — I went up to North Carolina to work, he said. Spent three months cutting cabbages for $4.75 an hour. It was too much work for me. I swiped this knife here, which I use for self-defense.

You’d better sharpen that blade, Stan. Hey, what happened to the mayor?

Who?

Charles. That white guy.

Him, laughed Stanley. We got rid of him. Showed him he couldn’t hack it.

Where is he now?

He might still be in jail. Weapons charges, plus assault on an officer, plus battery. I think he had a death wish. He’s an arrogant, arrogant asshole. If your personality don’t fit his stereotype of somebody supposed to be how he wants you, then you just can’t get along with him.

And Celeste?

She left town, Henry. There was some trouble over her.

What kind of trouble?

You sure you want to hear about it?

Shoot.

Well, this guy named Ivan — I don’t think you met him — she let him shack up with her after you left. Her girlfriend Pat had just died of cirrhosis, and she was pretty lonely. You shouldn’t hold it against her, Henry, the shacking up, I mean, ’cause you didn’t stay with her…

No complaints on my end. Go on.

And this asshole named Lightning Bug had the hots for her, too. So one night when Ivan got sleepin’ right here on the Slab, about two mattresses down from me, Lightning Bug got him a gas can and poured gas on Ivan and burned him up. So Ivan woke up runnin’ around with fire on him like a stunt man. You shoulda seen him, Henry. It was just like the movies. Well, he screamed and screamed, just like a fuckin’ human torch. Then the firemen come and give him morphine. Lightning Bug got no right to do that. If he got some disagreement with Ivan, he coulda broke his leg with a pipe or somethin’…

Well, I see where Lightning Bug got his name,

Firebug more like!

So what happened to him?

We hopin’ he get life, Stanley said, and Tyler suddenly realized how, ghetto style, he sometimes left out inessential verbs now, as if any extra effort were too much. — Before the man come, Stanley went on, Lightning Bug run away, but then he come into the shelter where we eatin’ an everyone started shoutin’ right there at the dinner table: Murderer, murderer! He of course said he didn’t know that Ivan had died. Well, Henry, I lay right here watchin’ it! I couldn’t put his flames out! It took about ten minutes for him to burn up! Well, they arrested the bastard. When Celeste heard about it, she cried a long time. Then she left town. She mentioned your name more than once. I dunno if she was going to look for you or what…

Tyler said nothing. He remembered how Celeste had said to him: I was like holding in there for the past couple of years, but then I guess I got tired. I had to let go. And then I ended up here. I could feel myself going, but I was just so tired I didn’t care anymore…

He thought to himself: And now how tired must she be? I hate Irene!

Hey, guy, said another black man. What’s your name?

Tyler, said Tyler. Everybody calls me Henry. How’s the food down here?

Not bad. Pretty decent cooking at that shelter. A little bit of red tape before and after is all.

What the hell, said Tyler.

I been on the Slab here about a year, the other black man went on. I was under that freeway, too, but I never met you. But it’s good to remember old times, ain’t it, bro?

Sure, said Tyler dully.

I remember unity, the man said. But it was segregated type unity. It was all about those cliques, man. And when they closed us down, it was all political. They came in early one morning with paddy wagons and got us all out, drove us to the shelter. They let us take what we could carry. Then they burned down the shacks. By noon everything was gone. A lot of people, you know, if you bring ’em straight up off the street like that, they gonna rebel. Ellen was there at the time. She rebelled. They dragged her off screaming.

The man couldn’t stop talking about it. He had to tell the story again. — They told us to vacate, he said. They held us up on trespassing charges. Couldn’t go back. They let us take some of our stuff, our blankets…

How were you feeling? Tyler asked, wanting to understand.

Empty inside. Angry, ’cause I didn’t understand why. We’re not harmin’ anyone; we’re not burglarizin’…

Tyler nodded, sitting there on the sidewalk.

I didn’t go to jail, said the black man, strangely desperate to continue his story. Went to an abandoned building on Ninth and Fourth. The city would come in and roust us out for a day on misdemeanor charges, then back we’d go. We called it the round robin.

All right, brothers, Tyler suddenly cried, filled with the same meaningless but searing urgency which had rushed him out of Coffee Camp and which sometimes drew him back to Coffee Camp, which had locked him into being the Queen’s slave and into loving Irene and hating Irene and fucking the false Irene and making love to Celeste, so what’s to live for?

Moneyman! they replied laughing, and Stanley explained: When Moneyman come around, he come in his station wagon. Everybody be here, he get a handout from Moneyman. Moneyman hand out the dollar bills like candy, then he go.

Tyler looked at him. — How’s the habit, Stanley?

When you set a time to stop, to stop smokin’ crack, to get up off the Slab, then you settin’ yourself up for a relapse. Recognize the Power that’s greater than you, Henry. Trust Him. That’s the only thing you can count on.

Tyler watched as he counted his quarters, stood up painfully, and went off to buy crack.

| 589 |

He awoke with the taste of Irene’s cunt in his mouth. I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene!

| 590 |

I like the slow, nice, quiet life, Waldo had said. No adventures, no drama. It is the last spot on earth. — And he’d spread his hands, there in his underwear.